Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for the introduction. Stable coins are no longer just a playground for crypto traders. They are rapidly evolving into rails for business payments. With MK now reshaping the payment infrastructure, we can now see that it's no longer just about um compliance.
It's about execution, private rails, and euro denominated adoption. To break this down, I'm joined by a powerhouse lineup representing the absolute cutting edge of payment infrastructure, banking, and stable coin issuance. Let's dive right in. Schuman Financial Launch Europe as a make a compliant stable coin. Until now, roughly 99% of the stable coin market has been denominated by US dollar stable coins such as USDT and USDS.
Eduardo, from your perspective, how do you see the strongest demand for Euro denominated stable coins in B2B payments in crossber uh infrastructure or elsewhere?
I know thank you. Thank you for having me. And indeed the the stable coin market is still dominated by the USD stable coins and and we figured that out early when when we launched the project in 2025 that trading was going to be remained on on dollar stable coins. So we needed to be more creative on on our approach to do business and how to establish a market for ourselves. So where we put a lot of focus was particularly on becoming a a a stable coin and payments infrastructure provider for companies outside of Europe that they needed a a strong European partner to service their pay their payments needs both in crypto and on the fiat side of things.
So we're mostly working on B2B transfers. Um our clientele entails fintex in Africa and in Latin America for example where they collect euros with us. We convert that into stable coin. Our own is called Europe. Each client can decide on which chain they can um mint the stable coin and then those assets are moved to Africa or Latin America.
So in short answer that money movement quick in and out of the stable coin um is serving us to drive adoption of our stable coin. For example, in August we did 150 million euros payments volume and September is is growing. We're going to close north to €200 million euros and and we've become a payments infrastructure provider using a stable coins as a medium of of exchange the value.
So from commerce balance perspective how do traditional corporate clients in Germany and across Europe view stable coins today?
Yeah. So I would say that uh we can best describe the corporate client's approach to stable coins to stable coins as really pragmatic because the conversation has clearly moved beyond the question whether stable coins are technically possible or not. They are as we know and now the companies are asking whether the stable coin infrastructure can solve a concrete problem better than the existing payment infrastructure. So is there still skepticism around regulation and security or let's say businesses are already actively seeking solutions to enable uh faster settlements?
Yeah. So I wouldn't describe the corporate demand as skepticism versus enthusiasm so to say. Yeah,
it's really more pragmatic because as I already mentioned the businesses are looking for clear use cases where they can use this technology such as for example 24/7 transactions uh crossber payments and settlement liquidity management and also as we have already heard during the other presentations programmable payments linked to tokenized assets and I would say that there are still existing barriers such for example accounting treatment because whether a stable coin is classified as a financial asset or a cash equivalent. The in the impact on balance sheet liquid the balance sheet internal policies also and also risk management can be really different and also the companies expect to have some more clarity regarding redemption rights tax treatments and also the exposure created by the issuer of the stable coin and its reserve model. And here comes Mik play actually because the regulation has created a really a good euro common European framework which gives the companies more clarity when they deal with uh yeah with stable coins and stable coin issuers. But on the other hand the regulatory clarity does not automatically mean that the the the complete payment process is operationally ready. So from our perspective, we still need to to have some wallet level AML sanctions controls, core ledger integrations, and really important reliable and fast on and off ramping because tokenized money is only as fast as it offramp rails.
And we from the bank's perspective, we have to make sure that this doesn't become the bottleneck in the process. Yeah, as I said, I think the corporate client's demand is pragmatic and our role as a bank is therefore to to to make this distributed ledger technology usable and trusted so that our clients can benefit from this innovation. Okay, thank you Andre Bernie. BBNK serves as a bridge between these two worlds and we have seen massive interest in your infra infrastructure regarding Max Mastercard's acquisition by Vivian K. So what are the biggest technical and operational pain points that you see that at the moment are moving from traditional swift and sea to stable coin rails?
It's probably something unusual to say for a stable coin company, but actually
um Sepha is quite good.
Okay.
So I think one reason why um um Euro stable coins are struggling so much um especially Sea instant.
Yeah.
Works almost flawlessly in in Europe. Um and up until last year even the major pain point got removed from SEA instant. It was kept at €100,000. So if you need to do a corporate transfer of 10 million um euros, then you need to basically do a 100 separate instant transfers. This is my personal theory.
So don't um uh it's my personal theory. Um I think this cap got removed last year because actually the main arguments from the stable coin crowd was you know what if you use stablecoin in Europe you can transfer 10 million hundred million dollars instantly. And I I think then Sepa thought hm if he can't beat them then join them.
Okay.
And and remove the the cap there. On the swift side they um I think Swift hasn't moved as as fast as SEAR. It's still typically a day or two especially internationally when you have um two um intermediary banks involved. And then also if an intermediary bank has a question about a payment it gets stuck and you cannot directly talk to them. you have to talk to your bank, they have to talk to this bank, you play broken telephone.
Um, and this can be very painful process. Um, especially if there's hundreds of millions of dollars involved. To be fair, it's usually new kind of transfers and new counterparties. Once the intermediary banks have seen the same counterparties for a while, they've screened them, it gets much more um flawless. Um, but this is a major pain point in Swift and the other one is getting access to Swift in a reliable way.
It's also very hard. There's I think a lot of financial institutions that offer Swift Rails, but they just then work with another bank who works with another bank. So getting access to let's say a first tier banking partner that gives you reliable access to Swift is also very difficult.
Mhm. Okay, great. Since our panel refers to the private rails, my next question is towards you and Andre. What role do you expect banks to play in this emerging infrastructure? Will they build their own solutions, integrate with providers such as BVNK or even combine both models?
Could you give us an example or even explain some kind of a use case that you have uh seen?
Yeah, sure. So, I really expect that uh the banks will adopt a combination of private and public networks
because in the corporate and institutional world privacy and governance are essential basically. So, and if a transaction contains commercially sensitive data, a fully block a fully public network is probably not the right solution for this use case. And here comes the here come the permissioned networks and also the tokenized deposits. They're relevant really in these cases. And tokenized deposits also keep the funds within the banking system and they can be integrated into the treasury liquidity and also the credit processes.
And we have already started exploring tokenized deposits in commerce bank uh with our with our participation in the commercial bank money token initiative. But in the same time, we and the banks do really understand that that they cannot stay only on private rails because stable coins are already functional on public blockchains and they can then they they provide great reach and connectivity across markets and especially for the case when the counterparties do not share the same banking network, they can be extremely valuable. And Commerce Bank is also participating in an international consortium together with 20 other leading financial institutions to support the development of a reserved baked and trusted stable coin proposition. And it's officially now it's public since about I think the uh the beginning of the month and yeah I guess that for the future the winning strategy from bank's perspective will be really to build connect and orchestrate because uh the banks may issue money they can distribute third party tokens or they can provide custody or redemption services but really the critical part and the critical capability will be the interoperability and I do not think that the customer and our clients really have to select the network which is running in the background but the banks should actually route each transaction over the appropriate network based on privacy based on speed counterparty reach and also cost. So in short, I guess the banks will have to master all relevant rails while giving their customers at the same time one consistent and trusted experience and that's our goal.
Okay, Bernie, do you have a use case you can share with us?
Uh 100% and actually there's nothing else to add. Uh I support 100% what you said. It's exactly how we also see it. Um closed loop and open loop. Um there will be a bridge in between.
We we need both the closed loop. You can trust everybody in the system. Um an open loop if you want to bridge closed loops. And maybe this is where my example also um comes in. Um BBNK works with a um big um contractor and HR provider deal
and um deal contractors um who live for example in in South America. They work for North American and European companies. And these companies pay from their call them closed loop systems for example they pay deal in sepa. So they do a separate transfer to deal and then with BBNK's help they um convert it now to USDC and we send it in an open loop on the on the on the blockchain they send it to South America and then again in let's say in Brazil you have now the Pix network with the Brazilian Royale again a closed closed loop and they built the bridge here and then in Brazil you have local FinTech where then have a Visa card you have a stable coin balance and they can now use their um yeah their their salary that they received a few seconds ago.
Oh, great. That's quite interesting, Eduardo. Yes. Yes. You're not forgotten, though.
No, no. I wanted to add like an interesting use case that we're working with a couple of banks in in Spain where I'm from is basically atomic settlement between tokenized money market fund and our stable coin Europe. So basically any depositor can buy our stable coin in a it's a closed loop as well closed loop of customers is still in beta testing but basically they buy the stable coin and then with that the stable coin they can access these tokenized money market funds that they are offering and vice versa once they want to sell the tokenized money market fund they get into the stable coin. So they are always in let's say in web3 space and and the idea for us is pretty useful because we can replicate that with other tokenized money market funds in the market and we're trying to understand what kind of liquidity is needed in order to always have circulating balance between both assets. So I think banks are in general looking for more use cases on how to operate and and participate in the space.
So how is Europe making uh this accessible to traditional businesses?
This is mostly let's say accessible or they are focusing on like a small and medium enterprises that they have cash balances in their bank but maybe they don't have enough to buy I don't know a million euros of a bond or a tokenized or a money market fund that is sold by the bank. So they want to give access to a smaller trenches and that's where they're focusing like medium to si smalls size enterprises. Okay. So since trust and security actually are also important in building especially a new infrastructure first from a bank's perspective what security compliance and even operational standards must stable coin infrastructure meet before it can be integrated into corporate payment flows.
Yes. So I guess that's the starting point from bank's perspective is pretty much straightforward. So the stable coin infrastructure has to meet the same high standards as every other critical payment infrastructure. So it has to be secure and resilient. The private keys need to be protected through bank grade custody, clear segregation of duties and they also need yeah secure and strong recovery procedures and also every smart contract blockchain node and each bridge need to have independent audits and also continuous monitoring because DORA so the digital operational resilience act actually reinforces this because even if A bank relies on third party providers provider, we still cannot outsource our accountability so to say.
And second uh the compliance really cannot stop at the customer and we still need to have some wallet and transaction level controls so that the travel information can be exchanged verified and if a transaction is some kind of suspicious or something is missical or is incomplete it could be suspended or yeah further invest further investigated. Yeah. And also the transaction history and the the the wallet address need also be screened because yeah we still need to have controls also on this level. And in this case the blockchain analytics providers they play an essential role and we get from them yeah a risk score. But this risk score is really not that enough on its own.
So it has to be fed into the bank's compliance system and then support a clear payment decision. So overall I would said that the really the requirement from bank's perspective is to have an end to end control or at least just to yeah try to have as to try to minimize the risk as much as possible. So we should have effective compliance, reliable 24/7 operations and actually a full reconciliation into the bank's own system and also the the payment process.
Okay. And how does human financial safeguard it reserves and even ensure secure insurance and redemption?
So on our side our our main priority as in any other stable coin is to always maintain the peg. So we for us Euro P our stable coin is synonymum to one euro always and and in our case we basically safeguard the reserves of the stable coin in three different banks and Mika has a great guidelines in order how to do that but we work with sog um our license is a French EMI license so we we decided to work with a strong reputable French bank to invest our reserves. So we have that set up with their prime brokerage unit. We have banking circle as more of a tech partner in order to issue virtual eye bands and process um more like the transactional banking aspect of our business. And then for higher level of transactions we work with AB and Amro clearing.
So those are our three banking partners under Mika. We need to have at least three and hopefully if we grow more we we will need more but those are our three partners and in in terms of of minting and redeeming operations. Our setup is basically every time one euro comes in into our virtual IBN we provide to the client there is an automated minting in the whitelisted wallet that we have from the user once they are on boarded. So we offer them the wallet infrastructure and they can see the balance in their virtual Ivan and then they decide how to move it between both. [snorts]
Okay. And BBNK, how do you ensure secure wallet operations and even convergence between stable coins and fiat currencies? Yeah, obviously security and the digital asset space is u the number one thing and I think if you haven't heard yesterday there was a major hack at a at an an exchange hundreds of of millions of dollars stolen and that's actually in in a closed loop system you can you have a chance to recover these and in an open loop system it will very difficult very painful could take years if if even um and of course we have multiple certifications um ex external audits audits from the regulators. But I think what's the most important thing is a mindset around it. For many organizations also some I worked to in in the past security is really a the checkbox.
Um it's a bargaining chip during a sprint plan planning or roadmap planning and uh at BBNK it's it's part of the culture and our our CTO even frequently um addresses the company and says imagine the code base is leaked. Imagine our network is is compromised. Are our controls and what you're building every day? Would that still like uh be safe? [snorts] And now even this the stories from OpenAI and um Anthropic and Google hacking even without them knowing have hacking other organizations who knows in our networks.
Maybe the agents are already in all in our networks. So I think if you kind of feel um good assuming this then I think you you've done your homework. Okay, great. Since we are at our actually at our last uh question, but you have time. So, please at the last question, you have the the free space to elaborate.
Uh I would like to ask you, let's say five years from now, what will everyday payments between businesses look like? This is a payment uh this is a question towards all of you. I I I kind of start and then maybe you pitch in my our view at least or the goal from from the company is to have the stable coin being the main our stable coin at least the main settlement asset between like emerging economies and the European Union and where we're putting a lot of effort is let's say servicing companies in Latin America, Africa and Asia to transact daily with our stable coin Europe uh on institutional grade level limits right so we can process 50 million per transaction 150 million per day and and is a I really really wish to reach that level we are not there yet but our view is that companies from outside of Europe transact seamless between our stable coin as if they have a normal payment over SEPA
Bernie do you have something to Yeah. So I think that basically 5 years from now stable coins are are going to be viewed as something exotic as maybe today from some of the corporate clans but they will not also freely place the traditional rails which exist today. The stable coin issuer brands may continue to matter because of the credibility of of the issuance. But as I already said, the technology at least I see I think I I see this way will run in the background and the customer won't have to deal with the complexity. So in short I I guess that's the the rails will multiply that's but the customer experience will converge more or less.
Mhm. So actually as you mentioned exotic so will stable coins actually be seen as something exotic or will they become the invisible engine behind? Yeah, I agree with Andre that um eventually um they they will fade into the background. There might be numerous issues, numerous rails. Um but there's a there's a sender and there's a recipient and then in the middle let's say an expert, a bank, a financial institution that will find the cheapest and most efficient way to transport that that value.
And actually we um had that I don't want to name names. We had that with a very big um remittance remittance company. um we approached him and say hey don't don't why don't you want to use stable coins for your international um treasury balancing um and I said no you know we not we're not interested but then we approached a partner of theirs and uh they started using stable coins so actually even if you think you don't use stable coins maybe a partner of yours is already using it and I think this is also the the goal if they can offer you a cheaper more faster way um yeah go for it
okay Great. Thank you. That was a great discussion. Ladies and gentlemen, if we have to summarize everything that was said today in one sentence, I believe that if you agree also with me that the future of business payments will not happen despite banks and stable coins, but actually in synergy with all of these with all of these things. So, thank you to our incredible panelists for the discussion, for the insight, and thank you all for the attention.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. [applause] Hey, for a second, can you please stay for a second? Just a quick reminder that uh you can ask questions by scanning this QR code. Now, we have time for just one uh question and I will read it out loud. Today, it seems traditional payment settlement networks like Swift are being weaponized.
Does that support the thesis behind stable coins?
Weaponized.
Weaponized.
Weaponized. [snorts] What what do you mean by weaponized? I
I don't uh I didn't mean anything, [laughter] but some some of the people here maybe meant something like attacked or
something like that.
Yeah, I think in in sense of attacking um we in the digital asset industry, we like to attack um the the incumbents and I think it's half marketing but also there's a half at least half truth to it. they they have a lot of um problems and challenges and um sometimes they need a little bit of external motivation to resolve those and if they if they if they don't then I think alternative options will emerged and also the swift network actually recently announced maybe half a year ago that they're working also on blockchain projects. So I think it's a net positive for the for the financial industry as a as a whole. um either a new technology will emerge or the incumbent is forced to improve.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And there are more questions. If you vote for some of the questions, they will appear on the top. So there's a big chance that I could read the exact question if you vote for it.
Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] Hey,
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