Host Justin Friedman sits down with Rachel Mayer, VP of Product at Circle and one of the masterminds behind Arc, to unveil Circle’s new layer one blockchain. Drawing on Rachel’s experience trading emerging-markets currencies on Wall Street, they start with the inefficiencies still embedded in traditional cross-border money movement.

Rachel explains how Arc is designed as an “economic operating system” for on-chain finance, with stablecoins used for gas, opt-in privacy, and interoperability built into the network from the start. The conversation explores why privacy and auditability need to coexist, how a permissioned validator set including major banks and payments companies changes the model for public blockchain infrastructure, and whether instant settlement should always mean irreversible settlement.

They also dig into Circle’s broader strategy for bringing foreign exchange on-chain, including the Circle Payments Network, which enables cost-effective and compliant global payments, StableFX on Arc, which aims to reduce counterparty risk for institutions by settling select stablecoin currency pairs on-chain, and Circle’s support for a growing ecosystem of non-USD stablecoins. Rachel makes the case that local currencies will remain relevant, and explains why deeper on-chain liquidity could eventually reshape cross-border payments and institutional FX.

Learn More

Visit: Arc.io

Visit: Circle.com

Connect with the Host & Guest

Justin Friedman

Rachel Mayer

Follow Rachel on X

Follow Arc on X

About Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm is a special series with Rain focused on what it actually takes for stablecoins to become the default for everyday payments. Instead of rehashing benefits or highlighting pilots, the series breaks down the real work behind winning on Main Street, from upgrading payment rails and navigating regulation to embedding stablecoins into products people already use. Through conversations with builders and operators, we explore how tokenized money moves from early adoption to practical, widespread use across businesses and consumers.

Subscribe for more conversations on what it actually takes to bring tokenized money into the real world.

Presented by Clair.

What if the best financial product is the one users never have to go looking for?

In this episode of This Week in Fintech, Clair founder Nico Simko joins us to explain how a personal frustration with the US credit system turned into a profitable earned wage access business serving hundreds of thousands of businesses.

Nico talks about Clair’s evolution from digital bank to embedded financial infrastructure, and why the company ultimately decided to work through payroll and workforce management platforms rather than build another standalone consumer app. The thesis is simple: people do not want another login. They want access to financial tools inside the systems they already use at work.

The conversation also goes deep on the less visible work required to make earned wage access function at scale, from bank partnerships and state-by-state licensing to underwriting, repayment infrastructure and the build-versus-buy decisions facing large payroll providers. Nico explains why some of the simplest-looking fintech products can be among the hardest to build.

They also discuss the human side of short-term liquidity, Clair’s ambition to help users eventually graduate beyond earned wage access, and why profitability gives fintech companies more freedom to build around real customer problems instead of chasing every new technology trend.
A conversation about embedded finance, credit, regulation, payroll, product-market fit and what it takes to build financial infrastructure that actually works.

Subscribe for more conversations on fintech, payments, stablecoins, and the future of financial infrastructure.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Nik Milanovic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikm/

Nico Simko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nsimko/

About This Week in Fintech

This Week in Fintech’s Podcast is where the decision makers shaping the future of finance come to talk candidly about what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s coming next in fintech. The show goes beyond headlines to unpack the real stories behind product decisions, regulation, and market shifts with leading founders, C-suite execs, and ecosystem veterans. This is your front-row seat to the people and ideas moving money into the future.

Host Justin Friedman interviews Blake Duncan, Alchemy’s Lead Agent Experience Engineer, about what happens when AI agents replace humans as the economic decision-maker. They start with fundamentals: What makes a smart wallet “smart” and how the x402 protocol will enable the pay-per-use Internet as agents increasingly outnumber human visitors.

Blake argues that mainstream adoption will accelerate when wallets and applications turn on smart features and improvements in user experience, such as sponsored gas fees that enable embedded wallets to work seamlessly on-chain. Justin interrogates the potential for micropayments to reinvent the economics of the Internet, where fraction-of-a-cent transactions will fund API calls and research tasks that could never be possible using legacy methods of payment.

Blake walks through Alchemy’s suite of solutions for agentic commerce: AgentCard (a payment card for agents); Agent Pay (enabling merchants to accept x402 payments); and Agent Wallet (a developer-facing embedded smart wallet). He articulates a vision for how smart wallets can enhance trust by integrating guardrails to properly scope what an agent is allowed to spend, and how that model can flex when an agent hits constraints on preset limits.

They close on the potential for convergence between two parallel paths to crypto adoption: the familiar lane of stablecoin-linked cards and other familiar user experiences; and the AI-native lane, which imagines a future where humans can depend on their agents to perform tasks beyond simply shopping on the Internet, while spending money efficiently and responsibly.

Learn More

Alchemy: How to Build Onchain Agents: Wallets, Payments, and Real-Time Data - https://www.alchemy.com/blog/how-to-build-onchain-agents

The Block: Alchemy and Privy roll out technical integration to smooth pain points of 'onchain finance' - https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-04-28-alchemy-and-privy-roll-out-technical-integration-to-smooth-pain-points-of-onchain-finance-399239

Connect with the Host & Guest

Justin Friedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justingfriedman/

Blake Duncan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-c-duncan/

Follow Blake on X: @BlakeCDuncan https://x.com/BlakeCDuncan

Follow Alchemy on X: @Alchemy https://x.com/alchemy

About Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm is a special series with Rain focused on what it actually takes for stablecoins to become the default for everyday payments. Instead of rehashing benefits or highlighting pilots, the series breaks down the real work behind winning on Main Street, from upgrading payment rails and navigating regulation to embedding stablecoins into products people already use. Through conversations with builders and operators, we explore how tokenized money moves from early adoption to practical, widespread use across businesses and consumers.

Subscribe for more conversations on what it actually takes to bring tokenized money into the real world.

Host Sasha Pilch sits down with Vroon Modgill, Founder & CEO of Sokin, to explore how modern treasury infrastructure is transforming global payments.

From slow settlement windows and fragmented banking relationships to stablecoins and real-time treasury management, Vroon breaks down why traditional treasury workflows are overdue for an upgrade. He shares how Sokin combines global bank accounts, stablecoin wallets, payment capabilities, and ERP integrations into a single platform that helps businesses move money more efficiently across borders.

The conversation covers hybrid payment routing, the role of stablecoins as a treasury tool, the challenges of on- and off-ramping, and why licensing, banking partnerships, and infrastructure have become critical competitive advantages. Vroon also shares insights into Sokin's rapid growth and what enterprise customers are demanding as they expand globally.

Whether you're interested in stablecoins, cross-border payments, embedded finance, or the future of treasury, this episode offers a look at how financial infrastructure is evolving for a more connected world.

Subscribe for more conversations on fintech, payments, stablecoins, and the future of financial infrastructure.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Sasha Pilch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-pilch

Vroon Modgill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vroon-modgill/

About This Week in Fintech

This Week in Fintech’s Podcast is where the decision makers shaping the future of finance come to talk candidly about what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s coming next in fintech. The show goes beyond headlines to unpack the real stories behind product decisions, regulation, and market shifts with leading founders, C-suite execs, and ecosystem veterans. This is your front-row seat to the people and ideas moving money into the future.

Host Sasha Pilch sits down with Gaston Irigoyen, co-founder and CEO of Pomelo, to unpack why waiting a full year to launch a card program became the startup thesis behind one of Latin America’s fastest-growing fintech infrastructure companies. Drawing from his experience scaling fintech in LATAM, Gaston shares how infrastructure bottlenecks around issuing, processing, and credit card management pushed Pomelo to rethink how modern payments infrastructure should work.

The conversation explores how banks and fintechs across the region are racing to launch products faster, from co-branded cards and remittances to crypto-linked offerings, while moving away from legacy providers. Sasha and Gaston also dive into Latin America’s increasingly “multi-rail” payments ecosystem, where cash, cards, real-time payments like Pix, and stablecoins all coexist. They discuss stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, and what early agentic commerce experiments reveal about the future of tokenized money movement and fraud prevention.

Subscribe for more conversations on fintech, payments, stablecoins, and the future of financial infrastructure.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Sasha Pilch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-pilch

Gaston Irigoyen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gastonirigoyen/

About This Week in Fintech

This Week in Fintech’s Podcast is where the decision makers shaping the future of finance come to talk candidly about what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s coming next in fintech. The show goes beyond headlines to unpack the real stories behind product decisions, regulation, and market shifts with leading founders, C-suite execs, and ecosystem veterans. This is your front-row seat to the people and ideas moving money into the future.

Presented by Rain.

Host Justin Friedman sits down with Larry Wade to unpack how PayPal brought PYUSD from concept to real-world payments while balancing innovation, regulation, and consumer trust. The conversation explores PayPal’s early move into crypto, why on-chain transfers became critical for interoperability, and what changes when a global payments company shifts from supporting digital assets to issuing its own stablecoin.

Larry also breaks down the compliance and operational realities behind PYUSD, from regulatory oversight and reserve attestations to product-market fit and cross-border payments. The episode dives into how PayPal is thinking about merchant settlement, payouts, and reducing friction in global money movement, as well as why the company expanded beyond Ethereum to networks like Solana, Stellar, and Arbitrum as it builds toward mainstream stablecoin adoption.

Subscribe for more conversations on what it actually takes to bring tokenized money into the real world.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Justin Friedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justingfriedman/

Larry Wade: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryswadejr/

About Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm is a special series with Rain focused on what it actually takes for stablecoins to become the default for everyday payments. Instead of rehashing benefits or highlighting pilots, the series breaks down the real work behind winning on Main Street, from upgrading payment rails and navigating regulation to embedding stablecoins into products people already use. Through conversations with builders and operators, we explore how tokenized money moves from early adoption to practical, widespread use across businesses and consumers.

Powered by Spade.

Money moves faster than ever, but the hardest moments in fintech still happen when something goes wrong: a confusing transaction, a disputed charge, a fraud claim, or a control that fails when regulators come calling. Hosts Julie VerHage-Greenberg and Lauren Crossett talk with Shanti Shanmugam, CEO and co-founder of Casap, and Natasha Vernier, CEO and co-founder of Cable, about what it takes to build trust in those high-stakes edge cases and how modern AI is changing the playbook for banks and fintechs.

We also get candid about founder life: the highs, the gut-punch lows, and the practical ways they stay resilient, from building a support network to separating identity from the company. Finally, we debate how agentic AI could drive more niche consumer finance products, what creates real loyalty, and what advice actually helps new grads entering fintech now.

Go to https://www.thisweekinfintech.com/the-fintech-ogs to subscribe! 

And be sure to subscribe to all of the This Week in Fintech podcasts to stay up to date on the latest conversations shaping the future of finance.

Host Justin Friedman sits dow with Luke Tuttle, Chief Product and Technology Officer at MoneyGram to talk about the realities of building global payments infrastructure at scale. The conversation explores how stablecoins are changing cross-border settlement, why trust and compliance remain critical in remittances, and what it takes to deliver instant cash pickup across more than 200 countries.

Luke breaks down the operational side of modern payments, from treasury management and liquidity challenges to cloud infrastructure, AI-native risk systems, KYC, AML, and local regulation. They also discuss why mainstream stablecoin adoption may come less from consumers demanding crypto products and more from institutions quietly upgrading the rails underneath global money movement.

Subscribe for more conversations on what it actually takes to bring tokenized money into the real world.

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Justin Friedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justingfriedman/

Luke Tuttle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luketuttle/

About Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm is a special series with Rain focused on what it actually takes for stablecoins to become the default for everyday payments. Instead of rehashing benefits or highlighting pilots, the series breaks down the real work behind winning on Main Street, from upgrading payment rails and navigating regulation to embedding stablecoins into products people already use. Through conversations with builders and operators, we explore how tokenized money moves from early adoption to practical, widespread use across businesses and consumers.

This Week in Fintech’s Nik Milanovic sat down with Coinbase Chief Business Officer Shan Aggarwal to discuss Coinbase’s Q1 2026 earnings following the company’s latest earnings release.

• Q1 highlights, including all-time high crypto trading volume market share 
• USDC growth on-platform and why stablecoin economics matter 
• How institutional and developer products reinforce retail liquidity 
• What the “everything exchange” means for tokenized markets 
• Early traction in retail derivatives, prediction markets, and integrated DEX trading 
• Why Base sees a 10x jump in stablecoin transaction volume 
• Agentic commerce on Base, the X402 protocol, and machine-to-machine payments 
• What Coinbase is prioritising through 2026 

Presented by Rain.

This episode of Crossing the Chasm, host Chiara Munaretto is joined by Malcolm Clarke to discuss how Western Union is bringing stablecoins into the real world with the launch of USDPT. Malcolm explains why Western Union believes the future of digital dollars is not about making consumers learn crypto, but about using blockchain behind the scenes to make cross-border payments faster, more efficient, and easier to scale.

Chiara and Malcolm dig into the infrastructure challenges that still define global remittances, from liquidity and settlement timing to the need for reliable fiat off-ramps, and how USDPT can help reduce that friction. They also explore Western Union’s stablecoin-backed card experience, flexible custody options, interoperability across chains, and why trust and practical utility will be the deciding factors in bringing stablecoins to everyday users.

Subscribe for more conversations on what it actually takes to bring tokenized money into the real world.

Connect with the Host

Chiara Munaretto: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiaramunaretto/

About Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm is a special series with Rain focused on what it actually takes for stablecoins to become the default for everyday payments. Instead of rehashing benefits or highlighting pilots, the series breaks down the real work behind winning on Main Street, from upgrading payment rails and navigating regulation to embedding stablecoins into products people already use. Through conversations with builders and operators, we explore how tokenized money moves from early adoption to practical, widespread use across businesses and consumers.