Retail Banking, Built Onchain | Joao Alves at Pragma Lisbon 2026

Wed, Sep 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

Joao Alves, Co-Founder of Bleap, explains what it takes to build a retail bank onchain and why blockchain infrastructure can improve both product speed and global availability. He highlights permissionless deployment, global reach, direct settlement, and composability with existing DeFi building blocks. Compared with a traditional bank’s web of providers and proprietary APIs, an onchain product can combine wallets, swaps, yield, and payments more quickly, while still choosing carefully between custodial and unhosted architectures. Alves grounds the comparison in product decisions made while building Bleap. An unhosted wallet can reduce intermediary risk and connect to DeFi protocols directly, but the team still must solve account recovery, regulatory controls, card integration, fiat access, and support. Custodial systems can simplify some interactions while creating a different operational and trust model. He argues that builders should choose architecture based on the customer experience they want to deliver rather than treating custody as an ideological decision. Alves also examines the obstacles that determine whether these benefits reach everyday users. Fiat onramps, card top-up fees, fragmented liquidity, poor user experience, regulatory obligations, and thin markets for tokenized assets can erase the advantages of the underlying technology. He points to stablecoins and cross-border transfers as a strong near-term use case: payments that currently cost two to three percent and take a day can settle in seconds. The broader opportunity is to deliver familiar, low-friction banking products while letting users benefit from programmable assets and open financial infrastructure. He evaluates savings, payments, remittances, cards, and tokenized investments through a retail lens. Consumers will not accept paying two percent every time they add money, managing gas across several chains, or understanding bridges and chain mechanics. Stablecoins are valuable when the product hides those mechanics and delivers a clear improvement over existing services. Cross-border transfers between Portugal and Brazil illustrate the opportunity, while weekend pricing for tokenized stocks illustrates what still needs work. 00:00 Introduction to Retail Banking Onchain 00:28 Joao Alves and the Bleap Product 01:27 Global Expansion for Financial Apps 02:01 Noncustodial Deployment Advantages 02:23 Composability With DeFi Building Blocks 02:46 Open Finance Versus Vendor Contracts 03:16 Onchain Network Effects 04:03 Savings, Investing, and Payments Onchain 04:57 Custodial Versus Noncustodial Design 05:48 Regulatory Benefits of Unhosted Wallets 06:05 Efficient Settlement and Treasury Flows 06:28 Connecting Wallets to Swaps and Yield 06:42 Do Not Outsource Complexity to Users 07:05 Keys, Recovery, and Crypto Jargon 07:32 Hiding Chains, Gas, and Slippage 08:00 Account Abstraction and Paymasters 08:23 The Fiat Onramp Experience 08:41 Why Retail Users Reject Top-Up Fees 09:03 Bleap OTC and Stablecoin Conversion 09:23 Moving Beyond Tab-Based Wallet UX 10:10 Retail Banking Opportunities 10:33 DeFi Yield for Bank Deposits 11:17 Retail Demand for Better Savings Rates 12:03 Stablecoin Currency Coverage Gaps 12:41 The Instant Remittance Opportunity 13:09 Portugal and Brazil Transfer Costs 14:17 Tokenized Stocks and Global Markets 15:08 Licensing and Liquidity Barriers 15:50 Instant Merchant Payments 17:02 Blockchain Versus Card Networks 17:29 Closing Vision for Onchain Banking _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *Pragma Lisbon 2026* Pragma Lisbon 2026 was held on June 25th at the Carlos Lopes Pavillion in Lisbon, Portugal and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Lisbon 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMxB4xW8JYdk ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Joao Alves X: https://x.com/JoaoAlvesDotETH ✅ Follow Bleap X: https://x.com/BleapApp ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city