Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 12 - Building The Future of Fintech UX and Stablecoins - with Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect @ Money 20/20 USA 2025

Transcript

Ep. 12 - Building The Future of Fintech UX and Stablecoins - with Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect @ Money 20/20 USA 2025 · The Payments Shed

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Payment Shed podcast.
• 0:07
  Today we are joined by Jess Holgrave, CEO of Wallet Connect.
• 0:10
  Firstly, thank you Jess. Tell us a little bit more about
• 0:13
  you. So I'm Jess Holgrave, CEO of
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  Wallet Connect. Wallet Connect is a network that
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  comprises about 700 different wallets and over 60,000
• 0:22
  different applications in web 3. So we allow wallets and apps to
• 0:26
  connect and communicate with each other and and it's that
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  interoperability. We work across chain, across
• 0:32
  asset, across device to facilitate these these
• 0:37
  interactions. Fantastic.
• 0:39
  So we anticipate you mentioned before 400 billion in network
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  volume. What's driving that growth,
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  right? It's incredible, but what's
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  really driving the force? So that's the volume that our
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  network will process this year. About 65% of that is D5 S
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  decentralized finance, things like staking, lending and, and
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  other things. Well, some of the fastest
• 1:01
  growing areas are #1 institutional capital.
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  So these are funds that hold crypto, but they want to do more
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  now than just hold crypto. They want to stake those assets.
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  They want to use those assets in payments flows and other things.
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  The second like really big driver has been payments and
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  stablecoins is obviously like the top topic for everybody at
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  the moment, partly driven by regulation and things like the
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  Genius Act. And so we are seeing more and
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  more payments providers coming onto the network in a way that
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  enables that them to accept crypto payments from any of the
• 1:33
  wallets. So this makes it really
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  interoperable for end users and for businesses, for PSPS and for
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  all of their merchants to accept crypto, manage crypto payouts
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  and even do things. One of the things we launched
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  recently was a point of sale SDK.
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  So the point of sale devices, you can now just scan the
• 1:52
  wallet, connect QR code and instigate A crypto native
• 1:56
  payment. Fantastic, pretty impressive.
• 1:59
  Now when we talk about embedded finance, yes, it's a buzzword,
• 2:02
  but actually everybody's using it, right.
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  And if they're not using it, everyone's get involved in using
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  it. How are user control models, do
• 2:10
  you think playing their part in enabling that growth of of the
• 2:12
  embedded finance ecosystem? So I think in crypto, this idea
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  of the user being able to control their assets and their
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  data is really cool to the industry.
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  At at its heart, what it means is providing a wallet in this
• 2:25
  case and the private key that controls that wallet, the
• 2:29
  tooling to enable me as an end user to disclose my information,
• 2:34
  to make a payment, to control my assets.
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  So in in some ways crypto is like one of the O GS of embedded
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  finance because it really is puts the user right at the
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  centre and it's interoperable because I can take that wallet
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  anywhere across Web 3. So I think when as we see this
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  integration of crypto and traditional finance, we're
• 2:54
  seeing more and more of these things shared where traditional
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  kind of Fintech or a traditional fintech, if you could call it
• 3:00
  that has crypto features applications themselves or
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  embedding crypto. And I think for the user, it's
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  going to eventually, hopefully, become a much more seamless
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  journey across these two worlds. Where's the risk do you think
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  for for two things there. One is the risk to consumers,
• 3:16
  yeah, right. And two, we talk about payment
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  companies, gateways, acquirers wanting to get involved in the
• 3:21
  world. There's always been a slight
• 3:23
  concern of the kind of categorisation of card volume
• 3:27
  where's and also the risk to them, do you think?
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  I mean, I think So what is really interesting when you
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  think about card volumes is that today one of the hot topics is
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  like crypto backed cards. But what that looks like is I'm
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  connecting a wallet basically doing it at time of transaction
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  conversion into Fiat and then it's running purely on those
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  card rails from that point onwards.
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  One of the things that that we are seeing demand for is this
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  new point of sale SDK, which may means that the transaction is
• 3:57
  actually crypto native from the moment that it's initiated
• 4:00
  through the PSP until it's settled to the merchant and then
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  it can be converted into Fiat for that last settlement leg.
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  It completely bypasses the the card networks.
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  For an end user, this kind of is like for like, but for merchants
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  obviously it gives them potentially the ability to save
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  quite a lot on acquiring fees. So we are saying, we are saying
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  again, it's very early days, don't.
• 4:22
  Get don't. Get too excited because there's
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  still a lot of work for better user experience, but I think
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  it's something that's that is top of people's minds.
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  It's like, how do we disrupt the old way of, of, of doing
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  acquiring? I think having said that,
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  though, there are still a lot of challenges still to overcome.
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  User experience is one of them. Still quite painful when you're
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  using crypto today. We're trying to solve a lot of
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  that. Not needing to know which asset
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  my chain is on, not needing to know the difference between the
• 4:49
  108 different stable coins that are all USD.
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  Something. So there's still something that
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  that the industry needs to needs to work on in order so that end
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  users have a safe and secure experience.
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  When we talk about interoperability and and stable
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  coin, we know it's huge. We we talk about Web 3 and we
• 5:08
  hear it every single day. What does Web 3 mean to you as
• 5:12
  an individual within this ecosystem?
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  I guess on the the personal side, I think self custody or
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  the right to self custody is really important.
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  That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody will want to self
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  custody, but giving people that option to do that and also to
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  not be completely cut out from the traditional financial world
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  is really important. So we've been working as a
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  company on lots of things like travel rule verification or
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  message signing capabilities for wallets so that they can
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  interact with the more traditional financial services
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  in a like seamless and compliant way.
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  So that's one thing that that's super important for me because I
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  think that over time, individuals, especially from
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  some particular places around the world will want the ability
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  to, to really control and, and hold their own assets.
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  And, and then I think the second thing is that we see just so
• 6:02
  much demand for these better rails.
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  How do we make all of this way more efficient, which ultimately
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  doesn't even need to be about self custody, but it's about
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  with, you know, removing some of these actors from the ecosystem
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  who are very rent extractive whilst continuing to provide a
• 6:18
  better service for for consumers.
• 6:21
  Fantastic. Look, we're here at Money 2020.
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  What's kind of being your highlights so far?
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  Your low lights? And I think that the highlights
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  is having been here for several years now, this year feels like
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  the year where most of the questions about crypto are
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  actually really sophisticated people.
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  It's not no longer like, oh, what should we be doing or what
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  does this mean? Or isn't crypto just a scam?
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  And it's they're really sophisticated questions about,
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  OK, if I'm thinking about doing this XY and Z, what do I need
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  to, what do I need to do? And that for me marks this
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  inflection point, I think for the industry where the
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  traditional players are taking this very, very seriously and
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  have actually woken up to the fact that they need a strategy
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  and they need to need to do something.
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  So I think that's probably the the highlight for me in terms of
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  the low light. I mean, Vegas is always
• 7:11
  exhausting and the air conditioning is too much and
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  dries out my skin. But I think that the other low
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  light for me still continues to be like one or two conversations
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  where, you know, people don't bother to take the time to
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  really understand what crypto and and blockchain really is.
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  And they can be quite dismissive of it without, you know, taking
• 7:33
  time to understand. So it's definitely out of the
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  minority though, right? It was definitely the we rewind
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  4 or five years ago, it was very much cryptos coming to our
• 7:41
  world. It's full of scammers right now.
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  It's my goodness, this is going to help me run my business and
• 7:45
  drive more revenue, right. Exactly.
• 7:47
  Fantastic. And the last question, Jess,
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  I'll be asked all of our guests, the shelf of shame.
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  What is your ick in this world? What grinds your gears in the
• 7:54
  payments industry? You know, I think, I think it's
• 7:58
  still really, really hard for merchants to understand all of
• 8:02
  the different layers and to get to to give them enough
• 8:07
  information to choose how they should do this.
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  We know that payments is a really like lucrative space.
• 8:13
  That's why so many people build businesses there.
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  It's also a really complex space, but I still think
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  especially for some small merchants, you know, the cost
• 8:21
  that they pay for their payments is, is too high.
• 8:24
  It affects their margins so much that I I would love to see that
• 8:29
  side change. I think I agree with that.
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  It used to just be the plain odd four or five party model, right?
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  And now it's grown arms and legs and the four party models and
• 8:37
  individuals in that are now gaining their own four and five
• 8:40
  party models beside it, right? Yeah.
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  And for a small merchant, you know, if you're, if you're like
• 8:46
  a mum and dad, sure. How do you even navigate all
• 8:48
  that? How do you learn about it in a
• 8:51
  way that you're not getting completely ripped off by
• 8:53
  somebody or it's not just taking too much of your time?
• 8:56
  Ultimately, it should be really simple for you.
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  So how can we educate the length consumer?
• 9:00
  Right? Exactly.
• 9:01
  Fantastic, Jeff. Thank you so much for your time.
• 9:03
  Enjoy the rest of the show. Thanks.
• 9:05
  Thank you.