Stablecoins, smart contracts and the rise of more intelligent cash

Fintechs already have the talent, the ingenuity and after a decade of challenger success with innovations like Wise's borderless accounts, Stripe's one-click checkout and Revolut's multi-currency wallets - the credibility to reshape finance on a global stage. Those breakthroughs gave consumers faster payments and slicker front-ends; but let's call that Act I. 

Act II is unfolding now: money itself is becoming programmable, composable and borderless. Stablecoins can settle in seconds, smart contracts can execute "if-this-then-that" logic without humans in the loop and tokenised assets can move 24/7 across jurisdictions. The rails we lay today - whether they're open, interoperable and secure or fragmented and proprietary - will determine not just how fast value moves tomorrow, but how fairly it's distributed and who gets to participate in the next wave of financial innovation.

The challenge to builders today is this: if your vision begins and ends with speeding up domestic payments or making bill-splitting cuter, you're missing the bigger prize. Programmable money rewrites the playbook for remittances, trade, treasury and even machine-to-machine transactions. Are we building for that horizon - or solving tomorrow's problems with yesterday's stack?

What's the biggie with blockchain?

Behind the scenes, blockchain infrastructure is becoming the default layer for secure, real-time, permissionless value transfer. J.P. Morgan's Onyx platform, for instance, has settled more than US $1 trillion in tokenised intrabank payments on permissioned chains. 

If you're designing for the next five years, on-chain rails offer instant settlement, embedded logic and global composability that legacy systems simply can't match. No, it won't replace every system but it is rapidly becoming the preferred foundation for anything that needs to be fast, transparent and interoperable. This isn't about riding the crypto wave but about recognising a smarter way to move value - one that's auditable, modular and increasingly composable. 

If you're designing for the next five years, building with blockchain gives you access to speed, programmability and network effects that simply don't exist in traditional architecture. We need to shift our thinking from 'What is blockchain for?' to 'What's already working, and how does it fit into my stack?' 

Could stablecoins be the new fuel behind an AI-driven economy?

At Stripe's 2025 Sessions conference, co-founder Patrick Collison didn't mince his words: "There are not one, but two, gale-force tailwinds... reshaping the economic landscape around us: AI and stablecoins." In a world increasingly run by AI's, programmable stablecoins are the natural currency and could become the financial fuel behind an AI-driven economy.

Stripe has just rolled out stablecoin-powered financial accounts to businesses in 101 countries which allow companies to hold, receive and send stablecoins and crucially, to hedge against inflation and plug directly into the global economy. All of this without needing a traditional bank account. And it's not just Stripe, Worldpay, Mastercard, X and even Apple are exploring how to turbocharge their business using Stablecoins. 

This isn't theory; this is infrastructure and entrepreneurs in high-inflation countries can now operate in stable, digital USD. What's more, startups can pay contractors in stablecoins, skip wire transfer fees and move capital in minutes via lower-cost cross-border transactions .

Stablecoins have quietly moved from the fringes to becoming the go-to method for paying global contractors (instantly, with zero FX fees), cross-border commerce (settling USD payments in mere seconds), accessing savings (even in inflation-prone regions) and plugging into on-chain treasury and lending protocols (without needing a bank account).

So if you're building a payments platform, now is the time to ask yourself: can my product evolve with how digital finance is actually being used? If the answer is no - it might be worth reconsidering your architecture because what works here must scale there.

That sounds like "money, but faster." What else is cool?

Think of smart contracts as 'if this, then that' logic for money - basically code that executes financial actions automatically when certain conditions are met. There's no middleman, no lag and no manual work. This is where money stops just moving and starts doing.

Imagine if paying contractors happened the moment work is verified; if refunds were triggered instantly when goods didn't arrive; if cross-border trade ran on rules baked into your code, not your paperwork.

This is already happening globally - programmable finance means stablecoins that plug into automated workflows and APIs that react to real-world events. The question now moves on from can we move money faster? .. to can our money move smarter?

What's the next move?

What separates good from game-changing companies is vision. The winners in fintech will be the ones who design for what's coming, not just what's current right now.

If you believe that money will be programmable…
If you see that global commerce demands truly global rails…
If you know that the rules of infrastructure are being rewritten in real-time right now…

… then now's the moment to double down. Build with stablecoins. Plug into on-chain rails. Create APIs that are blockchain-ready. It's time to think like the internet: borderless, open and lightning fast.

Let's not just build for today's money; let's help define tomorrow's.