Triple-A’s Eric Barbier on How Stablecoins Are Powering Real-World Payments

Stablecoins aren't just a crypto talking point anymore.

They're becoming a real-world payments tool for businesses across emerging markets.

Eric Barbier, a founder and CEO of Triple-A, a global payment institution licensed here in the US, Europe, and Singapore.

Triple-A just partnered with Ugo, the Middle East and North Africa's leading travel app to enable stable coin payments for flight and travel bookings.

Eric, thank you for joining us here on Capital Markets this morning.

Thanks for having me.

So Eric, let's start with the big picture.

Why are stablecoins becoming a practical payment tool for businesses and not just an asset?

Because in many countries around the world and in particular in Africa, in many countries in the Middle East, but beyond, is that it's very difficult for people to hold US dollar.

And because maybe their banks are not allowed to offer USD deposit for many, many reasons, and the next best thing you can have is by just downloading an app, uh, you can actually own with stablecoin US dollar denominated currency.

And that will enable many people on the planet, and there's already 500 million users across the world to make international payments, while today it's very difficult for them to make an International payments because a lot of people don't have access to cards or they have limits on how much they can spend overseas with those cards and stablecoin is solving this problem in a very efficient way.

And let's talk about this new partnership with Ugo.

It is a great example of this where a traveler pays in stablecoins.

Weigal, uh, it gets settled in the local currency.

So walk us through how Triple-A makes all of this happen behind the scenes.

Yeah, so when you go on the on the Wile website to buy to buy your next next next flight to Dubai or or anywhere else, in addition to the traditional payment options like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and any other payment options they're offering, now what you can see is that you can pay with stable coins.

And and that's what Triple-A is powering for for Wigo, meaning that someone with stable coins will finally be able to use his stablecoins to purchase a flight ticket or a hotel booking, and on on on the other side, because Wigo doesn't want to touch any kind of digital asset, any kind of stablecoin, they don't want to have this on their balance sheet at any point in time.

So whenever say they're selling a flight ticket for $1000 they will get exactly $1000 on their on their bank account the next day, and that's that's what the whole process that we're facilitating is.

We go to sell to the 500 million people having stablecoins across the world without taking any compliance risk or liability risk, and they're only receiving dollars or euros on their bank accounts.

So, let's talk about the work that you guys do because you guys work across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, where markets and the currency, it, there's a lot of volatility and limited banking access.

That's a real challenge there too.

So, how significant is the demand for dollars across all these regions?

So, that's exactly, that's exactly the problem stablecoin is solving is that in many of those countries people are having troubles to get access to dollars in the same way.

So if I, if I take a concrete example, for instance, a freelancer in Africa is working for an international client.

Maybe in Europe or in the US, so what he will prefer to do is to get receive his payment in in stablecoin instead of a local currency like Nigerian naira or Kenyan shilling or whatever.

And now because he's holding those stable coins, he wants to be able to spend them.

And that's what with a partnership we've been doing with Wigo is that he's going to be able to use his stablecoin to make a purchase like buying a flight ticket or a or a or a hotel room, and that really helps to financially include at the global level people who were until now excluded to participate in the in the global economy.

And so, a very interesting question is regarding regulation.

So, how do you navigate the regulatory landscape, especially as rules continue to evolve across the globe?

Yeah, we've been investing since, since day one on getting, uh, making sure that we were complying with all, uh, all the regulation in all the countries where we operate.

So that's why we have licenses across the United States, Canada, um, in across the European Union, as well as as in in Asia and in particular in in in Singapore and.

And very soon in a way.

So, so, so a lot of of our investment is to make sure that the stable coins that we are processing are not originating from illegal sources or sanctioned, sanctioned sanctioned entities.

People think that everything which is a digital asset is completely anonymous.

That's not true.

Because it's based on the blockchain, so you're able to trace back where the stable coins are coming from.

So we can trace wallet from wallet and we're able to detect and block transactions in real time which are coming from, say, a sanctioned entity.

So if it's coming from a, you know, OFAC is now listing wallet addresses, digital asset wallet addresses.

On their sanction list, so if we were to receive funds directly or indirectly from such an entity, those transactions would be would be blocked, and our compliance team would be reviewing them, and we, we, we may potentially file a suspicious transaction report to the to the offeree.

And Eric, to wrap this up, looking ahead, travel is one use case, but what other industries do you see as the next frontier for stablecoin-based B2B payments?

I think we've seen a lot of interest on a lot of transactions in the luxury space.

So for instance, we're working with Farfetch, luxury retailer, and they've been and they're offering stablecoin as a payment option in many in many emerging markets, and and so that's a use case which is doing really well.

Another example I would give is everything related to to to to to video games that has been also very, very much trending, for instance, we're working with merchants like Razor, but for us, the big revolution that we're starting to see now is that it's more and more like business to business transaction.

Treasury management between again between emerging markets and and the developed markets.

So we're seeing use cases like import export, like cloud services providers, so more like B2B transactions which are now moving into accepting stablecoin as a payment option.

Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us on Capital Market.

It's definitely excited to see where your company will be going in the next couple of years.

Thank you again.

Thanks for having me.