Stephen: Stablecoin infrastructure. That is what we are talking about today on Around The Coin. I'm your host, Stephen Sargeant. We're interviewing the one, the only, Wesley Rios, who's the US and LATAM partnership lead at Morph Network. We're going to talk all about stablecoin infrastructure.

We're going to get into agentic commerce, regulation, compliance, and what it was like for Wesley to work at some of the biggest traditional firms you know, JPMorgan, Citibank, before jumping into a crypto native company.

We're also going to be talking about the solutions that Morph Network is going to be releasing to help merchants all over the world.

He talks about the challenges, the pitfalls. He talks about the transition in his career.

We cover everything in this episode.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a fun one.

We have Wesley Rios from Morph. Wesley, you cover the US and LATAM partnerships, and you're the lead under that project. Maybe give us a little bit of a background, 'cause you have some strong traditional companies on your resume.

Give us a little rundown and how you got into crypto would be a really great place to start this conversation.

Wesley: Yeah, no, uh, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here and have this conversation with you. Um, yeah, my background, I have a strong traditional payments. Uh, I start my career with, um, Citi, um, in the banking side on the transactional banking, uh, and it was all about payments. Um, from there I moved to JP Morgan, um, in Latin America, focused on regional payments for, you know, medium to large corporates.

Um, and then Mastercard, where I spent the last 13 years, um, on the consumer payments, where I work with, um, credit prepay, um, debit products, uh, across different consumer segments such as, um, um, affluent and underserved. So a very broad set of, um, experience. And coming to crypto was just a natural progression.

Um, payments is going through a fundamental shift right now. Um, and it's not about the front-end part of it. It's much more about the infrastructure part of it, uh, where stablecoins enable you to have so many different use cases and bring so much utility that before were very painful for traditional business to be able to manage payments.

And that's why I'm here. Uh, I joined Morph in March, excited to be part of this team, and I bring the traditional payment perspective into our business, and this has been extremely helpful

Stephen: I'm curious because, you know, you've been at Mastercard for 13 years before jumping into Morph. Mastercard was fairly early. They acquired CipherTrace, which is the blockchain analytics tool, fairly early in, you know, in its adoption, and they have the whole crypto partnership program that they just released in the last few months.

Can you tell me about the evolution of crypto? Doesn't have to be specific to Mastercard, but maybe to payments since you've had a front row seat, you know, especially with Mastercard leading the way when it comes to innovation and crypto and payments.

Wesley: Yeah. So when I was at Mastercard, one of the key things that Mastercard is very front and center is, being, the networks of networks, right? So money movement's not just about money moving with your card rails, right? It's also moving with the account-to-account rails. Um, and then, you know, stablecoins, um, becomes just another rails, part of their whole ecosystem.

And that's why they've been very progressive. And when I was there, even before, you know, stablecoin was a thing, um, the engagement with fintech companies was always a key enabler because that allows us to be able to force Mastercard to really think about what's next, right? Um, we have our traditional-- we had our traditional banks, um, as our traditional clients, but once we start seeing fintech become a key user of our network at that time, then it becomes very clear that there is a lot of use cases in a lot of different rails beyond just the card rail that we should be looking at.

And that's exactly what really pushed Mastercard to be so progressive and enable money movement. So it's not a card network anymore. It's basically a money movement network with, you know, the different rails are just there to be able to give customers, um, flexibility and choice, right? And Morph , it's one of the key things that I bring to Morph is that experience and being able to say, "Hey, all right, Morph is already on the front line on stablecoins," right?

But then we need to bring some of the traditional discipline into payments, um, which is not very common into Web3. Um, and that is where I sort of add a lot of value, and that what it makes so exciting for me to be part of that journey, to be able to shape, you know, the future of a company that's really being serious about payments.

Stephen: If I had to, you know, if you were on stage right now and you had to give, you know, a state of the union when it comes to stablecoin rails, give us a synopsis of where we are right now in this market. I know, you know, with the Trump administration, they've opened up a lot of gateways on their Genius and soon-to-be Clarity Act.

But where are we? 'Cause there seems to be so many players. We've had a lot of those players on the podcast. We've had Borderless.xyz, we've had Sphere Labs, you know, across the gambit. Where are we with stablecoin payment rails currently today?

Wesley: Yeah. So couple things, right? I mean the adoption is real. Um, uh, first of all, I think the conversation has shifted from, "Oh, this is a nice technology to have," to actually, you know, corporations and business are asking, "How can this help me reduce my cost? How can this help me reach new customer?" So just the shift of the conversation from technology to use case, it's one of the key momentum that we have behind.

So that's one. The other one is the utility. If you look at the capitalization of stablecoins, I think we are around $310 billion right now, um, and

the growth has been dramatically in the past 24 months. In addition to that, uh, I think Visa just announced that in June we have about $1.8 trillion of, um, movement in stablecoins, and 10% of that is related to payment activities. So the reality is there. I mean, the volume is there, the activity is there.

Maybe the capitalization has sort of stabilized, but the volume activities on that, um, asset has increased dramatically. So that's one. The other one is the regulatory framework, which has been critical. The GINNS Act last year coming to life really sort of providing a framework where companies can say, "Oh, okay.

Now I know the playbook that I need to follow to be successful here." So that's another key. And then governments across the globe are looking at that and also setting up frameworks as well because they see that money movement is a key utility for their economies. So that's the other one. And third is this had moved from like big corporation and banks from sort of like the R&D department to the operational team.

They're seeing this, "Wow, all right. I can ha- I can get instant settlement. So how can this help me be able to actually, uh, make my payment operation much more efficient? How can I make it work 24/7 so I don't have to worry about pre-funding accounts, all these different markets?" So a clear example of that is MoneyGram.

MoneyGram, you know, they're, they, they're adopting stablecoin technology. But the first use case they're going after is not really offering to the end customer at this point. Uh, although that's the vision that they have, it's really how do they actually make it easier for them to move, you know, money around their sort of over 500,000 agents that they have across the globe, right, with instant settlement instead of relying on the correspondent banking system.

So, you know, to summarize, I think it's regulatory framework, uh, I think it's the real utility, and, uh, I think it is the motivation from, um, corporation and banks to be able to make this a critical part of their operations.

Stephen: You know what's interesting? You're based in the US, you have Latin America upbringing with Brazil. What are those flows? I think BVNK, which was acquired at-- by MasterCard, I think while you were still at MasterCard, had this huge digital asset or digital dollar report where they mapped some of the flows, and a lot of it was coming out of La-Latin America and now the US.

What are those flows looking like? Are there opportunities that you see, uh, between the US and Latin America or the US around the world or Latin America around the world? 'Cause it seems like those are the two places where we're seeing the most emergence of stablecoin usage.

Wesley: Yes, if you look at, you know, and this is public information, the BVNK side, um, how much growth they had in, um, money movement. And I think their estimation is that in, um, 2025, um, it was about 30 billion. Um, but if you think about it, you know, 33% of that was just the US, and that growth came mostly just in 2025, right?

So, so, um, the US, it's a key source of funding for so many different corridors and from so many different sub-flows, right? You talk about remittance, you can talk about trade finance, and so on. So it's a critical, um, um, market to be part of this orchestration, uh, layer, right? So that's one thing. The other thing is that emerging market has a clear pain point.

Uh, and that is why what makes me most excitement is actually not really serving the large corporates in emerging market, but actually the small and middle-sized business. Um, because large corporates are able to access the existing payment infrastructure, and they have access to treasury and, uh, correspondent banking.

But small and middle-sized business, they don't, right? And stablecoin allows them to be able to tap into a new set of financial service, uh, around payments that they couldn't before, especially those small and middle-sized business that are sort of importing in Latin America from China, uh, across Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, uh, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela.

Um, those are markets where there is a high demand for payment product, um, and, US dollar access, um, that stablecoin deliver to that. but you were thinking, w- saying one thing about orchestration, and I think that is where the real unlock comes, right? Um, right now it's not just about stablecoin as an asset, it's really about how do you move that asset around in a way that is compliant, in a way that emits the local, uh, regulatory framework, in a way that actually allows you to have the right liquidity to be able to on-ramp, off-ramp between fiat, um, and the endpoint.

Um, and all that needs a lot of orchestration, and I think that's one of the key areas at Morph r, at least, that we're focused on, right? How do we sort of abstract the orchestration away so that small business can actually take benefits of the payment products that we have?

Stephen: And can you explain exactly what Morph is? Because we've had so many stablecoin providers, we've had layers, orchestration layers, kind of like what Borderless X-Y-Z does. Maybe explain what Morph is, and are you targeting a certain, you know, degree or a certain use case where I think Sphere Labs really focus on merchants around the world and mo-- you know, getting rid of their pain points.

Are you f- you know, trying to directly focus on a certain use case for Morph customers?

Wesley: Yeah. So right now we are really focused on the merchant side, right? The small and medium-sized business looking for pay-in and pay-out solution. Um, that's one key area. Within that, it, it can be very broad. And, and one of the areas that we think that, and as I was saying earlier, the biggest opportunity is that, you know, the, the import and export segment.

Um, um, those are the ones specifically in emerging market that has enormous pain points of have access to US dollar assets to be able to enable them to actually do trade with companies out of China, in particular Asia Pacific. Um, and, for us at Morph, um, we, are in a unique position because we have the full payment stack, right?

We're not just another layer two, um, sitting on top of Ethereum. We actually own the settlement layer, but we also own the orchestration layer on top of it. So we try to abstract everything away from our merchant. Everything related to wallet management, to liquidity management, to compliance management, um, to developer, um, platform, to the whole FX and also the cash in, cash out, which I'm call the on, you know, the on-ramp and off-ramp.

All of that, we try to abstract that away and orchestrate that on behalf of the merchant, where they're just focused on running their business, collect the money from the customers, be able to manage their, you know, invoice, be able to track and r-do reconciliation, and be able to make payouts via batch payments using our dashboard and our platform.

And we provide that by be able to have a full end-to-end integration of that payment stack, and that's what sort of makes us different than other orchestrator out there which only operates at the orchestration layer.

Stephen: I'm curious, what was the biggest pain point for merchants, and what were they doing before Morph? Or were they even accepting stablecoin transactions before Morph? Like, were they just patching together several different solutions similar to what we do, I think a lot of the times in compliance when it comes to fraud and AML?

What was kind of the biggest pain point where they're like, they came to you and then they realized you offered like a more fulsome and robust solution

Wesley: Yeah. I think the biggest pain point, um, one is ac-access to USD, um, assets. That's one. Um, but the other one that, that became very clear is that, and, and, and I always joke this, right? People think payment's just a transaction. It's just like moving data from point A to point B, and it's not, right? Actually, payment's about trust, right?

It's about accountability. It's about a sender and a receiver, and there is a relationship between those two parties, right? So then you have to really sort of build a payment solution around all those components, um, because all merchants, they're not looking just, "Oh, I just want to receive the money," but also they wanna know when did the money arrive, uh, does this match my invoice?

How does this help me to be able to actually in-integrate with my CRM system so that I can track the payment end-to-end, it becomes seamless to me. Um, and those are clear pain points that they're coming to us, and we are actually built on top of a stack, those functionalities, so that it becomes literally easy to integrate into the existing, um, system.

Um, so therefore, there is not a complexity for them to build about integration themselves. Um, and that is one of the key areas that we see the biggest opportunity. So that's one. Um, the other one is, um, the ability to be able to, uh, have access to off-ramp and on-ramp. Um, and that's another area that we're working across the globe, leverage our Bitget ecosystem to be able to enable them to have that, um, because we already have that within the Bitget ecosystem so that we can tap into that and allow them to be able to make payments and fiat in different locations.

Um, and, a-a-and, and the other one is, uh, Bitget has over 120 million users on their platform, right? So we can help them with distribution as well, awareness. We have some merchants coming out to us, "Hey, I'm launching this specific, uh, digital service. Can I actually, uh, co-market it with you, um, and be able to allow me to use your platform to be able to bring awareness around my product?"

So all those things coming to fruition, and those are the key things that we actually look to address and leverage the assets that we have to be able to deliver more value to them.

Stephen: Morph has a whole ecosystem, so we're not just relying-- When it's an orchestration or a settlement layer, you have to plug in several different players in order to make that layer as smooth as possible. You mentioned potentially how they can transact through Bitget or get awareness through Bitget. As a partnership lead, can you tell me some of the other partnerships that really drive a lot of what Morph is doing?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, so we have, you know, um, Elliptic from a sort of compliance perspective, Sumsub from a KYC perspective. Those are partners that we are working with. Uh, we are also working with, you know, local stablecoin issuers across different markets to be able to enable that sort of, um, we call it the stablecoin alliance, so that we have actually direct relationship and ability to be able to transact in local fiat in key markets.

So that's another angle. Uh, we of course working with custody like Fireblocks and so on to enable that easy, um, uh, wallet management as well on, behind the scenes. Um, um, so compliance engine, uh, the on-ramp, off-ramp, the local stablecoin sort of network, um, and the custody piece, those are key pieces of partnership that we have built and we are continuously looking to expand as we, uh, go into different corridors.

The other thing that we, we realize is that, you know, different markets have different ecosystem, and payments is all about the ecosystem. So as we start reaching out to new markets, we are realize that we have new set of partnerships that we need to go after, uh, and that is just part of our evolution and adapting and learning, expanding as we actually talk to real merchants in different markets across the globe

Stephen: You talk about that compliance stack. You know, you come from a traditional standpoint, so regulation and compliance is probably part of your, y- y- your, your terminology on a everyday basis. Were you surprised about how complex some of this cross-border regulations, travel rule, emerging regulations, what's coming out of the US?

And Brazil is being touted as having one of the most strictest regulatory regimes when it comes to crypto, along with the EU. Are you shocked about how complex this global regulatory market would be?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, whenever a technology start getting major adoption, then the question really becomes, um, what, what, what, what is that, you know, government wants to make sure that it doesn't break and then all of a sudden it comes back to them later on, right? Um, in traditional finance, uh, you know, and, and I remember when I was, you know, having early conversation with, you know, Web3 companies and even fintechs, right?

They're always so impatient with us, right? Saying, "Oh, you guys move extremely slow." Um, and again, they're coming from a technology-first mindset, right? Not from a payment-first mindset, uh, because payment is much beyond just that, right? Someone is going to have to hold the bag if the liability doesn't follow through, right?

So, so, so, um, it's not because, you know, traditional finance did not understand blockchain technology. It's really because they're really focused on risk management. Um, they wanna make sure that they, you know, whatever goes out to market fulfills not only the compliance requirements, but also the operational stability requirements, the SLAs r- that you need to have in place.

Um, and, and, and all those things really forces you to really be much more thoughtful on your go-to-market. So coming to Web3, uh, I think that awareness is much more real today than it was 12 months ago, uh, because Tr- TriFi is going into Web3, but also Web3 is coming to TriFi. Uh, so there is sort of a conversion, uh, but the one thing that people are not sort of, um, trying to stay away from is not to meet the compliance requirements.

Everyone is laser-focused to ensure that whatever they bring to market will meet the rec- regulatory framework and it will meet the compliance standard of traditional finance, and that's non-negotiable. So therefore, um, it's clear that we as Morph, we need to have a sort of a compliance-first mindset, regulation-first mindset, and if that requires us to be able to go a little bit slower, um, that's what we will do to get it right from the get-go.

Stephen: I'm curious how, you know, how much does speed and friction play on what you're trying to do, especially in, you know, new, new re-regimes and regions that you're entering in where you might not know exactly where the regulatory frameworks or they haven't been constructed or the guardrails aren't up 100%.

How tough is it to move into those markets?

Wesley: Well, you know, it's, you know, uh, that, that really becomes on a market-by-market basis, and it should be a risk decision. One of the key things that we have at Morph is the philosophy on non-custodial, uh, wallets. So, you know, the fact that we position ourselves as a technology provider to be able to enable people to move money between their custodial or non-custodial wallets, um, that's one thing that we are actually laser-focused on.

Um, but the other thing is really when we go into markets, uh, we wanna understand exactly what the ecosystem is, understand how we can go out to the key stakeholders and be able to provide educational content for them to understand how to best manage this, um, space. um, but then it really becomes a ve-very sort of thoughtful, risk-based, um, uh, approach to each one of those markets individually.

Um, so I don't have a answer that is like, "Oh, this is our global approach." Uh, but the fact that our approach is really to be a non-custodial, uh, technology provider, um, that really sort of allows us to be much more, uh, flexible in what we can offer from a technology perspective and not really have to deal with the, uh, regulatory aspect from a custody of fiat money on our side, right?

So that's one of the key things that we focus on.

Stephen: I'm curious, obviously you have decades of traditional experience, although you don't look like you you would. You maybe have to give us some of your e- your health, your health care secrets. I'm curious, have you seen... I think the shift is here. You know, defense, hyper native, very crypto native companies are now kind of rebranding, 1inch now kind of rebranding, and really going after and attracting institutional capital and the institutions that are getting into digital assets.

Are you seeing the shift away from crypto native to more of the TradFi dip- dipping their toes into digital assets?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, you know, um, I think Everyone is asking this question: How can I provide a better product to my consumer or to my customer, right? And then there is no discussion. Blockchain technology allows you to be able to level up, right? It's just a better infrastructure specific when you talk about the payment space where there is a lot of fragmentation in the existing payment ecosystem.

And I'm talking about cross-border payments in particular, right, with correspondent banking. So the fact that people see blockchain as the technology that enables them to level up the product and service, um, then the question becomes is, okay, what are the expectation of those customers and consumer, right?

From a Web3 perspective, they're saying, "Wow, those consumers and customers, they want a Web2 experience just like they have today," which is digital and seamless. It's not broken. It's not, you know, them having to stitch together all these different, "Oh, I gotta use this wallet, and then I have to use this chain, and I have to use this bridge."

They don't want that. They want the same seamless experience that you have in traditional Web2 fintech like, uh, financial service. So they're being forced to be able to actually go into the traditional side because if they want to deliver those experience, they're going to have to embed some of the discipline that you have in traditional finance.

On the other hand, traditional finance are saying, "Wow, blockchain allows us to have twenty-four/seven availability, uh, global reach, a unified settlement layer, uh, instant settlement. Oh, that's amazing. With that, I can reduce a lot of my pain points around internal settlement systems that I have today." So those companies are saying, "Okay, how do I go to blockchain?"

Right? But what is the common force across those two spectrum is that they all want to go out to the market with the best product and the best customer and consumer experience. And that's why you see this conversion happening, and that is really the value here. So it's a good thing for the consumer, it's a good thing for customers across the globe, right?

And I go back to a point that I made earlier. Now a small and middle-sized business in emerging market can have the same se- set of payment products that only large corporate in those market had before, right? But it's because players are coming in and say, "Hey, we can push the envelope here. We can deliver this to you today with the same Web2 experience that you had with your bank."

Now you, a small and middle-sized business, can have that payment experience but using a different payment infrastructure underneath. And they don't even need to know that they're using stablecoins, you know. Um, for all matters, they don't even- care. And I, I, I don't know anyone that wakes up in the morning and say, "Hey, I wanna pay with stablecoins today."

They don't. They just want a

Stephen: want it faster, cheaper, and less headache. We don't wanna go into the bank to figure out what happened to that wire transfer at the end of the day. We don't wanna have to make that phone call

Wesley: Yeah, no, I, I, I joke, you know, um, i- if you are a, you know, a, a, a middle-sized corporation in, in Midwest US paying a provider in Brazil, uh, when you go through the correspondent bank, it's kinda like mo- as soon as you put in that payment order, right? It's kinda like a relay race in the dark, right?

Because you don't know what happens. It might take, it might take five days, it might take three days to get there. It goes through so many hops, you know, along the journey. Um, and now when you transition that to a better infrastructure that is a sort of a unified settlement layer that is the blockchain, then you have, you know, real-time visibility and the settlement happens, you know, much faster.

Um, so yeah, right. I think traditional finance... But not all traditional finance is broken, right? Uh, think about Pix in Brazil. That use case is fantastic. It's no, no 24/7 domestic rails. There is no role for blockchain there in particular. But then if you look at the cross-border, then you have a lot of fragmentation, a lot of different, you know, um, banks that need to be part of that journey, then that's where blockchain really addresses.

So, you know, uh, you know, Web3 people think, "Oh, traditional finance is broken," and I say, "No, it's not broken." Uh, actually some of the use cases that it was designed for works perfectly well. It's how blockchain becomes another sort of tool in the toolbox to be able to enable us to deliver better value to our customers and consumers.

Stephen: But now that we even get to the point where it might not be broken, we're finding a fix. We've already leapfrogged now into agentic commerce and agentic payments and AI agents booking our vacations for us. Can you talk to me about this new evolution into agentic payments?

Wesley: Yeah, you know, it, it, it's really, is a question that I don't think anyone has a clear answer to it yet, but people see that this is going to happen. So I, I give a couple, you know, at least personal experience. Uh, I think it was around Feb- February when I, I stood up my own open claw, right? I was so excited about it.

Uh, and, and now the senator, uh, I sort of unleash it to do a bunch of things on its own. Um, and, and that's when it becomes a realization that, okay, traditional payment system were built for humans in business. They were not built for twenty-four-seven agentic commerce, right? So, so the reality is that there must be another payment method that needs to meet the requirements of agents that are twenty-four-seven looking for micro-transaction type of, um, uh, of activities, and they're actually operated autonomously.

So that's going to happen. The number of agents that come alive, it's only going only to increase. What is not clear to me yet at this moment, what is the use case, right? Uh, I think in trading there is clear use cases for that. But then in, uh, everyday use, um, I still don't have a clear picture exactly what's going to be into the unlock for consumers, right?

How are they going to delegate to the agents to be able to book their own flight or their own vacation? Uh, but I think we're going to get there. Um, I think the bigger question is, okay, what-- you know, when that, when that happens, what are the tools that we need to give those agents from a payment perspective?

Um, and I think that stablecoin becomes a natural fit for that, um, because you enable a lot of use cases that was not possible before. Before, you know, if you want to consume a, a, a content from, you know, New York Times, you have to go into a subscription model. Now you can go on a content-by-content basis model, right?

So you can just pay for a micro-transaction for a specific article. That was not possible before. So that is another-- And how are we going to do that? I don't think you're going to use your, um, credit card for that. You know, the ticket size is so small, the economics is not there. So stablecoin becomes a, you know, a, a, a sort of a good fit for that.

So from a Morph r perspective, we're really focused on, okay, building the infrastructure so that we can support those use cases and let the market define what those use cases are going to be as the agent framework becomes much more mature.

Stephen: Especially as we get into the physical use of AI, when we think about the autonomous cars and robots and, uh, you, you start to think of micropayments. If you're running an autonomous Uber or a, a Waymo, and they're doing all these, you know, there's transactions to be made, there doesn't really need to be a human in the loop if there's not a human in the car at that point.

Uh, what are your thoughts about this transition from payments into not just on chain, but into this real-life, you know, physical persona?

Wesley: Yeah. The physical AI is, I-I think is one of the biggest, you know, uh, wake-up calls that all of us are going to have i-in the near future, right? I, I, I think, uh, I, I remember my experience when I actually used ChatGPT for the first time. Uh, I think it was, uh, ah, I think it was twenty twenty-four, uh, twenty twenty-three, twenty twenty-four.

Um, and, and I was like, "Wow, this is really transformational," right? Uh, and, and the ability that I... And that was, like, in Chap- uh, GPT-3, a long time ago. Um, I think in physical world it's going to be the same thing, right? So, so, so, so the question is: how do we empower, you know, physical AI to be able to transact on its own?

A-A-A-A-And I think it goes back to, from a transaction perspective, uh, digital-- physical AI is going to, uh, operate the same way as digital AI. I think they will need a complete different settlement of payment rails to be able to enable and support those payments. So the use case of a car going autonomous to a gas station and be able to pay that, right?

You know, and maybe, you know, it's not-- they're not paying for gas, maybe they're paying for, you know, power. Uh, do they pay for kilowatts and, uh, how that happens. All of that needs to be just automated away, um, and embedded as one of the tools that that sort of a agent has to be able to use to make payments.

Um, and I don't think it's going to be your card rails that are going to enable that. I think it's going to be your stablecoin rails that are going to enable that. Um, a-a-again, you know, uh, we can sort of speculate exactly what are all the different use cases. I think we don't even know which one it's going to be.

Uh, but I think that, you know, we, we should expect change to happen in the physical AI. Um, and I don't think it's going to be long enough that we're going to see robots walking down the streets doing things on their own. Uh, all of them are going to need to be part of the economy. They're just another member, another node in the economy.

So now we had business, we had humans, and now we have robots, um, that will need to be able to transact. We just need to make sure that we have the security, the compliance, you know, the delegation, uh, the liability shift. Uh, all those things we need to think about it, and that's why I think that we need to focus on providing them with the payment infrastructure that they can operate in an economic way, uh, in within the economy i-in a way that meets the expectation of our traditional finance system.

Stephen: Can you p-provide some insights into obviously the future of payments technology? It doesn't seem like we're running short of ideas and solutions and evolution, but is the real challenge, is the real bottleneck always going to be fragmentation? And because of those local markets that you have to operate in, is that just kind of the cost of doing business that these markets and these payment rails are always going to be fragmented, and the best you can do is create these orchestration layers to try and bring it all together in a seamless way?

Wesley: Yeah, that's a really good question. Um It's funny, if you think about fragmentation, uh, within the, uh, crypto space, you know, it's sort of, um, I, I think everyone came thinking that we would have o-one block-blockchain to rule all of them, right? One settlement layer. And, uh, uh, uh, as we came to realize, then you start creating layer twos, then each o-one of them become their own sort of ledger, right?

And that is sort of like we draw a parallel to traditional finance. That's exactly what we have in the existing, you know, financial system. Every bank, it's its own ledger, right? So then you create the Sift, SWIFT network to be able to allow interoperability across those ledgers. Now why was that created, right?

And I think there is a lot of forces that, you know, goes beyond just technology. So to answer your question, I think that fragmentation, it's something that is a reality. I don't think that we're going to have one single ledger that will allow us to be able to move in and out, uh, uh, seamless across the globe.

So the value that we need to focus on is, okay, how do you make this much more efficient? So what is the connectivity issue, right? So in traditional finance for cross-border, the connectivity tissue was the correspondent banking, right, with the SWIFT n-network. SWIFT network focus on the message and, um, the correspondent bank focus on the value transfer.

So those two things were decoupled. What blockchain enables us to do is that you can actually connect those two into one, right? So it's not me sending you a text message, "Hey, um, the check is in the mail," and then three days later you get the check in the mail, right? Now with blockchain, you're allowed in-- you-- me to send the message with the value at, at the same time.

So that's actually a step up, right? Uh, now the question is, okay, when we go into a specific market, um, do they have actually a digital version of the local currency so that we can do the swap on-chain, and you allow that sort of like velocity to take place? And that is where I think that we're going to get to as, you know, all the different ecosystems start building their digital version of that blockchain to allow us to be able to leverage blockchain end-to-end.

But it's still, it's going to be fragmentation, but I think the efficient level increases dramatically when you move away from correspondent banking and a SWIFT network to actual, actually having, you know, real time, um, instant settlement, uh, and, and ability for you to have global reach. You're still going to have to transition within each market, but that's going to be evolution of the whole sort of, uh, orchestration layer.

But orchestration's not going to go away.

Stephen: I'm curious, now that you talk about that and how we can move forward into this industry, you've mentioned trust a bunch in this podcast. It's funny, the evolution of this podcast will be more on the trust layer, our trust in technology, our trust in centralized parties, our trust in regulators and governments.

Where do you think we are globally when it comes to trust overall? Are we more trustworthy, least trustworthy 'cause of AI and deepfakes and not being able to trust an image or a video? Where do you think we scale on the trust index?

Wesley: Yeah. It, it's really, um, a, another good question.

Within the payment space, that's where most of my, you know, experience is. Trust is fundamental to everything, right? Um, but not-- i-it's not only one entity within the ecosystem that actually defines trust. It's the whole ecosystem itself needs to go and make it trust front and center, right? So let's go back, I don't know, three years ago, you know, in the crypto space, you know, there was a momentum there where trust was being built, and then you have FTX happening, right?

You know, um, even though there were a lot of players that were like, you know, front and center and focused on long-term trust, it took one entity to be able to destroy trust for everyone else, right? Um, so, so, so the question really becomes, you know, how diligence we can work together across the ecosystem to make sure that everything we do, it's in the best interest of established trust among the endpoints in this network.

And payments is a network. Like I said earlier, it's about a sender and a receiver, right? And that has a relationship, and that relationship exists because of trust. It is a, a manufacturer in the US trusting that supplier is going to send them the raw materials that they need to be able to do their business.

And then it is the supplier trusting the manufacturer will make the payments. And so how is it that you always think about all the mechanism that you have to have in place, that trust becomes front and center, and that transaction takes place. So, you know, in payments, if I think about it, um, what we are transition over is before trust was actually much easier to manage because it was within a bank, right?

The bank was able to be able to be the owner of the ledger and be able to control all the different components within its own sort of, um, ecosystem. What is happening now is a decoupling, right? I think about deposit money as closed-loop money, and I think about stablecoins as open-loop money, right? So what happens is that, you know- Because you move to open loop and s-- o-open loop system, it's not that, um, the requirement of compliance goes away, right?

It really becomes is who in this open loop system is responsible for delivering that trust, right? And, and then if you think about it, it's not just the asset movement, it's not just the settlement layer, it's the endpoints, right? The off-ramp, the on-ramp piece, right? The, the trust that you have to build on that.

So it's a different ecosystem. So we really need to work together with them to ensure that whatever they do, it's actually trust front and center. So there is a lot of educational, there is a lot of sort of, um, ensure that we select the right partners at the endpoint, um, and make sure that everyone is thinking about the long-term sustainability of this payment business and not just thinking about their own sort of, um, um, um, interest.

So that's, you know, how do we do that globally? Little by little, um, and make sure that we don't have, um, um, um, anyone sort of like disrupting this whole momentum that we're building.

Stephen: Now, I see on the Morph Network website that you guys have a couple solutions coming soon. I'm curious if you can give any insights on what's brewing at Morph?

Wesley: Yeah, no, we are really excited specifically on the, you know, small and middle-sized business. Uh, we are actually r- uh, going to launch our product August 4th, I believe that's the date, um, which is basically, uh, a m- merchant pay in, pay out dashboard platform that really brings together all the different assets that we have.

um and that is really, you know, sort of like the key thing that we're focused on and getting out there, talking to merchants. Uh, uh, we are in the process of selecting 10, uh, design partners to be part of a beta program, uh, where they'll be able to benefit to not only, you know, um, leverage our solution, but also be able to provide us real feedback and become part of our roadmap ecosystem partner.

Like earlier founders, you can think about it, so that we can really, you know, enhance and evolve our platform to make, you know, their ability to run their business much more efficient, um, and they're providing those feedback to us. So that's what really makes us excited. So ability for them to be able to do invoice management, ability for them to be able to maybe manage the inventory, the ability for them to be able to make payout via batch, to any wallet across any chain.

Uh, all those things are things that we're building up, and it's going to be part of our version one. Um, and with those design partners that we're trying to onboard. If anyone, anyone should be, you know, uh, focused on cross-border payments, anyone looking to become a, a merchant and wanna become a design partner, you know, please let me know.

Uh, we are really looking to do that across the globe.

Stephen: We love those. We love when people are promoting, you know, opportunities for partners and careers. I love that. Um, what's one thing, if you are emerging, like this sounds amazing, is there one thing that they should be cautious of? Is there certain transaction volumes they need to have, or certain things that they n- need to be put in place before they even start worrying about stablecoin infrastructure?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I think is first you have to really be a very diligent at i-identifying the problem that you have within your operation. You know, it's not about just, you know, a, a solution looking for a problem. It's quite the opposite. So if you think about, you know, a-- a-and, and that really depends specific on the vertical, right?

Like I said earlier, uh, importing and exporting Latin America, um, that's a clear use case that I see enormous opportunity. Um, those, um, small business, um, they want access to dollars. They wanna be able to pay, you know, Asia-Pacific suppliers in dollars, um, and they wanna be able to source those, um, uh, raw materials or, you know, manufacture goods.

Um, a-and they need to do that. And before now, if they want to go through the traditional finance, it's quite expensive, it takes quite a while, and sometimes banks do not even wanna serve them. Um, and those are the sort of merchants that we wanted to be able to provide them with the ability to make payout, uh, using our platform to do that.

Um, so that's one of the, the, the, the use case. Um, and what, what I mentioned earlier, design partner, we want to be able to co-create with our clients. I think it's so important for us to be able to sit down with them, help them map out the pain points, and, a-and then provide our solution and allow them to be able to come and tell us, "Hey, you know, if you do this, actually that will help us much more."

Um, and there is a lot of information that we don't know, and we only get that when we actually sit down, we have real conversation with our end customers. So that's what we are really doing at this stage

Stephen: I think just going through that kind of workflow process with a company like yours, I've seen so many different merchants, it's just a great exercise, right? Maybe their problems isn't around stablecoin infrastructure, but they'd be able to see where it can actually benefit them if they implemented it. I think a lot of times, you probably see this more than me, is that we think our problem is A, but it's actually B, but we don't know that until we talk to somebody that's seen the wide spectrum from A to Z when it comes to actual merchants using stablecoins and digital assets.

Wesley: No, what, what I was saying that, that, that sort of came through that just giving an example. I was working with a digital marketing agency out of Europe, um, and you know, we're talking about Europe and the pain points within Europe, and when we start talking about this, saying, "You know, actually my biggest pain point is actually trying to reach a specific market in Africa because I do have, you know, providers, content providers in those market and they wanna get paid and, you know, for them to be able to do that via fiat is so difficult."

And then that opened up us, "Oh, really? So let's look at those corridors and trying to map out what are the different, you know, partners that we have to have to be able to enable them to do that easily." So to your point, we might come in with a hypothesis, but through the conversation we can actually open up a whole new, you know, opportunity.

Um, and we-- because we have so many different assets, building blocks, we can actually, you know, think about how do we connect that to be able to serve that opportunity for them and make it easier for them to run their business.

Stephen: And I'm curious, any other announcements, exciting things, you know, X-402, agentic payments, anything that you're excited about in the second half of this year going into 2027?

Wesley: Yeah. So, um, the, the other thing is going beyond just, you know, uh, pay in and pay out, right? We are really thinking about how do we actually enable FX on-chain. That's one of the key things that we're going to be looking at in our platform. Um, we wanna be able to e-enable all, uh, all, all customers to be able to get better FX capabilities.

So that's something that we're thinking about. The other thing is the ability for them to be able to actually reach out, you know, to, um, other local stablecoins, um, um, y- through our Stablecoin Alliance. That's another area that we're thinking through and working and mapping out all the different stablecoins that you have in each market, and be able to build that and, uh, wrap a, wrap a product around that that makes it easy for our, our, our customers to tap into it.

Those are two fronts that we're thinking about, but there might be things that we learn through this experience that we're having right now and with conversation that might actually unlock. One thing that we are really good at, we are very quick to be able to learn, to pivot, and to go to market. So, so that's one thing that we're thoughtful about.

But the one thing that we do not really, um, uh, sacrifice is the focus on being compliance, um, and make sure that we have the right, um, guardrails in place to meet the expectation of what our customers should expect from us.

Stephen: I think at the end of the day, if you don't have the proper compliance guardrails in place, none of it even works, right? It doesn't matter what region you're in, there's going to be some level of regulatory guidance that you need to follow. Uh, I think Europe is a really great use case because, you know, there's several stablecoin companies that can't operate there anymore.

There's several crypto asset service providers that are no longer able to, uh, uh, operate there, like 2,800 of them, which changes probably the payment service provider landscape, I'm assuming, in certain regions.

Wesley: Yes, yes, yes. That's so true. And that's why, you know, it's so important to be really close to the market, close to, uh, the regulators, close to the people that are operating those markets for you to really understand exactly where things are going and how we can position and deliver value in a way that is thoughtful, but at the same time, you're actually delivering real value to the customers

Stephen: I'm curious about your personal career journey. You know, obviously opportunities, you could have stayed at MasterCard. There's a lot of BVNK, there's a lot of opportunities, I'm assuming, to move around within that organization if you wanna get closer to stablecoins and digital assets. For other people that are listening to this and seeing, you know, your resume of huge financial institutions, huge strat-fi companies, but still going into more of a infrastructure stablecoin, uh, ecosystem, what advice can you have from those that are dabbling maybe in crypto at their current organization, but really wanna go headfirst into a crypto native company?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, uh, one of my mentor once, once told me y-you wanna be where you're needed the most, right? So I was in traditional finance, my whole experience being traditional finance, and I worked with amazing colleagues, and they all had traditional finance background, right? So in Web3, um, you know, that sort of background, you know, is starting to become common, but it, but, but, but it's not, you know, 100% there yet.

And, and, and that is where I sort of gravitated to, towards when I decided to take the, you know, Morph, um, opportunities. Really, I can really come here and I can, you know, deliver so much value to my colleagues and to the business because I can bring all this different visibility, uh, the n- you know, internal working, the inner workings of traditional finance, uh, the discipline, the, you know, the, the use case perspective, uh, not focused on technology, but focused on how you deliver value to the customers, to the consumers.

You're talking about use cases and not about technology. All those things, you know, are things that, you know, in Web3, um, what I notice i-is now, you know, you know, front and center. So for me, it-it's the opportunity to, to, to contribute. It's the opportunity to be able to be part of a, a, a, a, a team that is, you know, aggressive, that is hungry, um, and that is looking for expertise in how they can deliver the best customer and consumer experience f-following the, the best practice of traditional finance.

So that goes to my point earlier when I said, you know, Web3 is really looking to deliver this amazing Web2 experience, uh, but using Web3 technology. Now, to deliver this amazing Web2 experience, you need to understand what those experience are from the inside out, and that's what I bring to the table. So anyone looking to be able to actually deliver most of their experience, uh, in, in, in a ecosystem, uh, if you are in traditional finance, then you should definitely explore Web3.

And if you are in Web3, you should definitely explore traditional finance. And I think that exchange is only going to make the whole ecosystem much stronger 'cause, you know, like it or not, things are converging,

Stephen: Yeah. It's

finance. We're no longer going to talk, to your point about nobody cares if it's stablecoin rails in the background, it's just going to be finance. It's just going to be assets, not tokenized assets, because all assets, all financial assets will be on-chain, so it'll just be assets again

Wesley: Yeah, no, and everything's going to be invisible. And when it becomes invisible, that's when, that's, you know, when you actually hit the nail on the head, right? And that's what you wanna be. You wanna focus on, is this the best payment experience? Uh, i- is this trust there? Um, i- is this a way that they can do this in a much more efficient way, low cost?

All those things, you know, that's what you need to focus on. And how you get there, uh, that's where you unlock by bringing the, you know, the traditional finance discipline into delivering those values

Stephen: I want to go on the internet and not have any idea what HTTP stands for, right? That's a, that's a, that's a sweet spot I feel like for payments

Wesley: A- and the other thing, you know, uh, it, it is, you know, being part of Morph, it's, it's a smaller company, uh, part of the BigGet ecosystem, so there is all this energy there, right? And, and crypto always been high in energy. And there is also this builder mindset, and crypto has been about building, right? And, and, and, and for me is I, I can harness all that energy and that momentum and the build mindset, and I can channel that into sort of delivering, you know, what customers and consumers want to have if they are running their daily lives on it.

Um, and, and, and, and, and that's another key driver for me to going there. And we are living a moment, you know, it's transformational. Uh, uh, I wake up every morning and not only in payments, but the whole sort of like AI and the possibility and the amplification of capabilities. Think about it, right? A small business not only have better payment products, um, in Peru today, in Lima, um, they actually have better marketing talent.

They have better, you know, engineer talent right there, you know, compressed in a model, right? You combine that together, that's amazing, you know, unlock of value. So for me, it's like, you know, for you to be stuck in the old way of doing things, if you are in a position, a job where you'd be doing the same thing over and over, you know, you gotta shake it up because now, you know, you wanna be where things are being, you know, uh, created.

Uh, and that's where I am, and so anyone looking for that leap, you know, that's what we actually propose, right? Take that leap because now is the time

Stephen: And you get best of both worlds. You're understanding blockchain, but now you're also understanding AI that's baking itself into blockchain because of the agentic economy, which is really interesting. Yeah, t- you get to touch both worlds. I'm curious, what's it like to be part of, like, the Bitget community?

Huge exchange, millions, hundreds of millions of customers. No huge negative, you know, responses from the industry that we see with other big exchanges. What's it like being part of, like, an ecosystem, uh, an engine that s- seems to be firing at all cylinders?

Wesley: Yeah. Uh, uh, I, I think it is, uh, like I said earlier, is the momentum, right? You know, you have this big ecosystem just moving, trying to go after so many different use cases and not being, you know, uh, afraid of taking, you know, chances across these different use cases, um, um, and learning from it. Um, so I think for me is, you know, the opportunity to leverage the momentum, the opportunity to leverage the learnings across different use cases, and the opportunity to be able to leverage the different assets that the ecosystem has, and the opportunity to be on the front line of talking to, on my space, real merchants and business and seeing how I can connect all those dots to be able to help them address their business problem, right?

So for me, having the BigGet ecosystem behind just elevates what I can do, uh, as a professional and as a business, and how I can actually help the end customers have a much better payment and financial service experience than they could before. Um, so, um, it's really exciting. Uh, and, and, and every single time within our team, we are, um, connecting the dots.

We are learning. There are a lot of things that, you know, they have done in the past that we don't need to try again, uh, because we learned from those. Um, and there are a lot of things that they're doing that we're like, "Oh, here is something that we can leverage." Um, and that really becomes in, you know, part of the culture.

And I think that's what BigGet it really has is, you know, um, we are here to build, and we are here to make this, you know, a financial service. We wanna democratize financial service to everyone, being the consumer front, being on the business front. And the question is, okay, how do we do that? And that's where everyone comes together, you know, uh, all hands on deck to be able to deliver that, and they're open to that.

So that's what I think it's big benefit of it.

Stephen: Huge community. We've had several members from Bitget, Bitget Wallet on the podcast, just real supporters of diversity and initiatives. Uh, love to see that. Wesley, where's the best place people to find you? Are you on LinkedIn more than Twitter? Uh, are you in person? 'Cause now you have the US and Latin, you're probably at maybe, uh, Merge coming up, I think coming up in Latin America soon, the big conference out there.

Where's the best place for people to connect with you?

Wesley: Yeah, LinkedIn is one of the best place. Um, um, but also, um, in Twitter, uh, @wesleyrios. Um, also Telegram, Wesley F. Rios. Uh, but, um, LinkedIn is what I check the most.

Stephen: Awesome sometimes I cannot kill the old habits, right? The traditional finance habits.

Yeah, no, I feel like we're seeing a lot of, like, cryp- people, like crypto Twitter people coming to LinkedIn realizing like, "Hey, like I might not be getting that traction on Twitter," but you bring a little of that, that little edge to LinkedIn, and all of a sudden now you can become an influencer, which means absol- as an influencer on LinkedIn it means absolutely nothing to...

other than 10 people, but it is fun to say that you're an influencer somewhere. Wesley, thanks so much for joining us. We encourage people to check out the Morph Network especially. Uh, I'm going to keep my eyes on what you're building, and maybe we can have a conversation in six months to see what you've built there at Morph Network.

Wesley: All right. Thank you so much. I

Stephen: Thanks so much, Wesley

Wesley: Bye-bye.

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