14 posts tagged with "cross-border payments"

Every time you send a cross-border remittance through a fintech app, the money appears to move instantly. Behind the curtain, fiat settlement can take one to seven business days. Someone has to front the cash in between. That "someone" is a fintech company, and the 1–2 % margin it earns for bridging the settlement gap represents one of the largest, most invisible profit pools in global finance — roughly $2–5 billion a year skimmed from a cross-border payments market projected to hit $320 trillion by 2032.

A new class of DeFi protocols called PayFi (Payment Finance) is going after that margin. And the poster child for the movement is Clearpool's cpUSD, a yield-bearing stablecoin whose returns are backed not by speculative crypto loops but by the mundane, high-velocity cash flows of real-world payment companies.

A DeFi staking protocol launched a mobile payment app — and its token exploded. Here is why StakeStone's pivot from yield infrastructure to real-world QR payments in Southeast Asia may signal the next chapter for decentralized finance.

A CEO who once dismissed crypto as speculative noise is now issuing a bank-backed stablecoin on a Stripe-incubated blockchain. Klarna's launch of KlarnaUSD on Tempo isn't just a product announcement — it signals that the $120 billion cross-border fee pool is now officially under siege from fintech-native stablecoin rails.

Every year, roughly $150 trillion moves across borders — trade invoices, remittances, treasury sweeps, payroll, and vendor settlements. Until recently, the plumbing behind those flows had barely changed since the 1970s: SWIFT messages, correspondent banking chains, and multi-day settlement windows that lock up working capital and drain 2–6% in fees. In 2026, that plumbing is being ripped open from both directions. Traditional finance giants are bolting blockchain rails onto their existing networks, while crypto-native payment companies are building stablecoin corridors from scratch. The result is a "dual game" — two competing architectures racing to capture the same enormous market, and the winner may end up being neither one alone.

Klarna, the Swedish fintech titan with 114 million active customers and $105 billion in annual gross merchandise volume, is about to become the first bank to issue a stablecoin on a major payments blockchain. KlarnaUSD, built on Stripe and Paradigm's Tempo network, is not just another dollar token — it is a strategic strike at the $120 billion in annual fees that cross-border payments extract from global commerce.

When the world's largest buy-now-pay-later company launches its own dollar-pegged stablecoin on infrastructure purpose-built by the world's most valuable private fintech, you are not watching a crypto experiment. You are watching the future of payments infrastructure crystallize in real time.

When over 90% of a country's crypto flows are stablecoin-related and cross-border payments still cost businesses 3-5% in fees and take days to settle, whoever builds the full institutional stack wins. Ripple just made its most aggressive move yet — assembling payments, custody, prime brokerage, treasury management, and a regulated stablecoin into a single platform for Brazil's banks and fintechs, while filing for a VASP license with the Central Bank of Brazil.

It is a bet that Latin America's largest economy, which received $318.8 billion in crypto value in 2024 alone, needs a one-stop institutional provider — not a patchwork of vendors.

On March 6, 2026, a Brazilian tourist in Buenos Aires scanned a QR code at a corner café, paid in reais, and watched the transaction settle in seconds. No exchange kiosk. No wire transfer. No USDT. Just Pix — Brazil's government-backed instant payment system — now operating across international borders for the first time.

The launch may sound incremental, but it signals something far more consequential: a direct collision between sovereign instant payment rails and the stablecoin infrastructure that has quietly dominated cross-border value transfer in Latin America. In a region where USDT adoption rates exceed 40% of the adult population in countries like Argentina and Venezuela, government-backed payment systems are finally fighting back — and they are doing so with the one thing crypto still struggles to match: frictionless simplicity at the point of sale.

A coffee shop in Dubai settles its daily Mastercard receipts in USDC. A garment exporter in Nairobi receives EURC instead of waiting three days for a SWIFT transfer to clear. Neither business had to install a crypto wallet, learn about gas fees, or even understand what a blockchain is.

That is the quiet revolution Mastercard and Circle set in motion when they expanded their partnership to bring stablecoin settlement to the acquiring ecosystem across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EEMEA) — a region where cross-border payment friction costs merchants 2–4% per transaction and correspondent banking relationships have declined 25% since 2011.

This is not a pilot. It is live infrastructure, and it may be the single most important stablecoin deployment that almost nobody in crypto is talking about.

Why Acquirer Settlement Matters More Than Consumer Cards​

The crypto industry has spent years celebrating consumer-facing card programs — Bybit cards, Crypto.com Visa, MetaMask Mastercard — that let individuals spend stablecoins at checkout. Those products matter, but they affect a comparatively narrow slice of the payments stack: the cardholder experience.

Acquirer settlement is different. It operates behind the curtain, in the machinery that moves money from the payment network to the merchant's bank account. When Mastercard enables acquirers like Arab Financial Services and Eazy Financial Services to settle in USDC or EURC, every merchant those acquirers serve gains access to stablecoin-denominated revenue — without changing a single line of code at the point of sale.

The distinction is critical:

• Consumer crypto cards: The cardholder holds stablecoins, which are converted to fiat at the moment of purchase. The merchant receives local currency as usual.
• Acquirer stablecoin settlement: The merchant (or acquirer on the merchant's behalf) receives stablecoins directly as settlement. No fiat conversion is required unless the merchant wants it.

This flips the adoption model. Instead of convincing millions of consumers to load stablecoins onto cards, you convince a handful of acquirers to accept stablecoin settlement — and the entire downstream merchant network benefits automatically.

The EEMEA Pain Point: $329 Billion in Friction​

The choice of EEMEA as the launch region was not arbitrary. Cross-border commerce in Africa alone is projected to grow from roughly $329 billion in 2025 to over $1 trillion by 2035, yet the region bears some of the highest payment costs in the world.

Consider the numbers:

• Average remittance costs in Sub-Saharan Africa sit at 6.49% as of Q1 2025, nearly double the G20's 3% target.
• FX markups add another 2–3% per transaction for merchants dealing in non-local currencies.
• Settlement delays of 2–5 business days are standard for cross-border merchant payouts through correspondent banking channels.
• Correspondent banking decline: The number of active correspondent banking relationships has fallen 25% since 2011, leaving entire corridors underserved.

For a merchant importing goods from Europe and selling in the Middle East, these costs compound at every stage. A $10,000 cross-border invoice might lose $650 to remittance fees, another $200–300 to FX spreads, and days of working capital to settlement delays.

Stablecoin settlement addresses all three simultaneously. USDC and EURC are dollar- and euro-denominated respectively, eliminating FX risk. Settlement is near-instant on supported blockchains. And because stablecoins move peer-to-peer on-chain, they bypass the correspondent banking network entirely.

How the Three-Layer Stack Works​

Mastercard's stablecoin infrastructure is not a single product but a three-layer payments stack that has been quietly assembling since 2023:

Layer 1: Consumer Spending​

Millions of cardholders can spend stablecoin balances at over 150 million Mastercard merchant locations worldwide through partnerships with MetaMask, Crypto.com, OKX, and Kraken. The consumer pays in crypto; the merchant receives fiat (or now, optionally, stablecoins).

Layer 2: Acquirer Settlement​

The EEMEA expansion sits here. Acquiring institutions — the financial intermediaries that process card payments on behalf of merchants — can now receive their Mastercard settlement in USDC or EURC instead of local fiat. Arab Financial Services and Eazy Financial Services are the first adopters.

Layer 3: Wallet Payouts​

Businesses and platforms can pay out to stablecoin wallets as a mainstream money-movement option, enabling gig workers, freelancers, and suppliers to receive payments directly in dollar-denominated stablecoins rather than volatile local currencies.

This three-layer architecture means stablecoins can flow through the entire Mastercard ecosystem — from the moment a consumer taps their card to the moment a merchant or worker receives settlement — without ever touching a traditional bank account, if the participants choose.

The Competitive Landscape: Mastercard vs. Stripe vs. Visa vs. PayPal​

Mastercard's EEMEA move does not exist in isolation. Every major payment network is racing to integrate stablecoins, but their strategies diverge significantly.

Stripe + Bridge: Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024, gaining stablecoin infrastructure that now underpins Visa-branded stablecoin cards in 100+ countries. Bridge received a conditional OCC national bank trust charter in February 2026, positioning it to custody digital assets and issue stablecoins directly. Stripe's approach is developer-first and network-agnostic, supporting USDC, USDT, PYUSD, and its own USDH on Hyperliquid.

Visa: Visa's stablecoin settlement hit a $4.5 billion annualized run rate by January 2026. Through Bridge, Visa now offers stablecoin-linked cards across emerging markets, competing directly with Mastercard's EEMEA initiative.

PayPal (PYUSD): PayPal operates a more closed-loop model with its proprietary PYUSD stablecoin, available on Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, and Stellar. Its "Pay with Crypto" feature lets merchants accept crypto while receiving fiat or PYUSD, but the single-coin approach limits flexibility compared to Mastercard's multi-stablecoin support.

Mastercard's edge: Unlike competitors focused on consumer spending, Mastercard's EEMEA initiative is the first to bring stablecoin settlement to the acquirer side of the network at scale. This is significant because acquirer relationships are stickier, more regulated, and harder to replicate than consumer card programs. Mastercard also supports the broadest portfolio of regulated stablecoins — USDC, EURC, USDG (Paxos), FIUSD (Fiserv), and PYUSD — through its Multi-Token Network (MTN).

The $33 Trillion Context​

The timing of Mastercard's EEMEA expansion aligns with an inflection point in stablecoin adoption:

• $33 trillion in stablecoin transaction volume during 2025, a 72% year-over-year increase.
• $300+ billion stablecoin market capitalization as of January 2026, up 55% year-over-year.
• $1 trillion projected stablecoin circulation by late 2026.
• B2B stablecoin payments surged from under $100 million monthly in early 2023 to over $6 billion by mid-2025.

These are not speculative numbers. They represent actual settlement volume flowing through stablecoin rails, increasingly for mundane commercial purposes: invoice settlement, payroll, treasury management, and supplier payments.

The EEMEA deployment adds Mastercard's 150+ million merchant locations to this equation. Even if only a fraction of EEMEA acquirers opt for stablecoin settlement initially, the addressable volume is enormous.

What This Means for Emerging Market Merchants​

For a merchant in the EEMEA region, stablecoin settlement through Mastercard solves several concrete problems:

Currency stability: In countries with volatile local currencies — Nigeria (naira), Egypt (pound), Turkey (lira), Pakistan (rupee) — receiving settlement in USDC provides implicit dollar exposure without needing a foreign currency bank account.

Faster access to funds: Traditional cross-border settlement takes 2–5 days. Stablecoin settlement can clear in minutes, improving working capital for businesses operating on thin margins.

Reduced intermediary costs: By removing correspondent banks from the settlement chain, merchants avoid the 2–4% in fees that eat into cross-border transaction margins.

Simplified multi-currency operations: A merchant dealing with European suppliers (EURC) and dollar-denominated revenue (USDC) can hold both stablecoins in a single wallet, converting only when needed at competitive rates.

The key insight is that none of this requires the merchant to become "crypto-native." The acquirer handles the stablecoin settlement, and the merchant simply receives a different denomination in their treasury. Mastercard's brand trust and regulatory framework provide the compliance layer that makes this palatable for traditional businesses.

The Regulatory Tailwind​

This deployment lands during what Bloomberg Law has called "the implementation year" for crypto regulation. The GENIUS Act in the US, MiCA enforcement across the EU, and FATF Travel Rule compliance in 42 countries are all creating a regulatory infrastructure that treats stablecoins as legitimate payment instruments rather than speculative assets.

For Mastercard, regulatory clarity is a competitive moat. The company's Crypto Partner Program — which now includes over 85 crypto-native companies, payment providers, and financial institutions — is explicitly designed to operate within these frameworks. Circle's USDC and EURC are issued by regulated affiliates, fully reserved, and audited — exactly the kind of stablecoins that regulators are encouraging.

In the EEMEA region specifically, the UAE's three-regulator framework (CBUAE, DFSA, ADGM) has been building a sophisticated licensing architecture for stablecoins, with Circle securing dual approvals from DFSA and ADGM. This regulatory groundwork makes the Mastercard-Circle deployment possible in ways that would have been unthinkable two years ago.

The Stealth Distribution Channel​

Perhaps the most consequential aspect of Mastercard's EEMEA stablecoin settlement is what it represents for crypto adoption at large: a stealth distribution channel that brings blockchain-based finance to billions of consumers and merchants who will never directly interact with a blockchain.

When a merchant in Cairo receives USDC settlement from Mastercard, they are using blockchain infrastructure. When a freelancer in Istanbul receives a wallet payout in EURC, they are holding a token on Ethereum or Solana. But neither needs to know or care about the underlying technology.

This is what mass adoption actually looks like — not millions of people downloading MetaMask, but millions of merchants receiving stablecoin settlement through the same Mastercard relationship they have used for decades.

The $33 trillion in annual stablecoin volume is about to get a lot bigger. And the merchants driving that growth may never realize they joined the crypto economy at all.

BlockEden.xyz provides enterprise-grade blockchain API infrastructure across multiple chains, enabling payment platforms and fintech builders to integrate stablecoin settlement rails with reliable, low-latency access. Explore our API marketplace to build the next generation of payment infrastructure.

By 2027, stablecoins will process more remittances in Latin America than Western Union. That projection isn't speculation—it's the inevitable outcome of a market shift already in motion. On March 3, 2026, Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund validated this thesis with a $70 million bet on ARQ, the stablecoin-first financial platform formerly known as DolarApp.

ARQ's raise arrives at a pivotal moment for Latin American finance. The region recorded $324 billion in stablecoin transaction volume in 2025—an 89% year-over-year surge—while countries like Argentina and Venezuela now see stablecoin adoption rates exceeding 40% of the adult population. This isn't crypto experimentation. It's financial infrastructure rebuilding from the ground up.

The $161 Billion Remittance Opportunity​

Latin America and the Caribbean received $161 billion in remittances in 2025, a 5% increase from the previous year.

This massive inflow represents lifeline income for millions of families, but traditional money transfer services capture 6-8% in fees and delays. Western Union, MoneyGram, and banks have dominated cross-border flows for decades with infrastructure that treats Latin America as an afterthought.

Stablecoins are dismantling that monopoly. Sending USDT or USDC between the United States and Mexico now costs up to 50% less than traditional channels while settling in minutes instead of days. The math is compelling: on a $161 billion annual market, every percentage point of fee reduction represents $1.6 billion in saved value.

Brazil leads the transformation with $318.8 billion in crypto value received—nearly one-third of all Latin American crypto activity. Over 90% of Brazilian crypto flows are now stablecoin-related, underscoring their role as payment rails rather than speculative assets. The country's stablecoin law, taking effect this month (March 2026), provides regulatory clarity that institutional players have been waiting for.

From DolarApp to ARQ: The Strategic Pivot​

DolarApp launched three years ago with a focused proposition: help affluent Latin Americans access dollar-denominated financial services. The platform enabled users to open dollar accounts, transfer funds across borders, and protect savings from local currency devaluation. It was a digital version of the "mattress dollar"—the age-old strategy of holding US currency as a hedge against inflation.

The March 2026 rebrand to ARQ signals a strategic expansion beyond that niche. CEO Fernando Terrés explained the shift: "Before focused exclusively on solutions for international finances, ARQ now operates as a complete financial platform for daily use, integrating investments, consumption, and credit cards in a single ecosystem."

The company now serves 2 million+ customers and has crossed $10 billion in annualized transaction volume. That scale provides the foundation for a more ambitious vision: replacing traditional banks as the primary financial relationship for Latin America's digital-native consumers.

ARQ's new service portfolio includes:

• Multi-currency accounts: Users hold digital dollars, digital euros, and local currencies with instant conversion at real market rates without hidden fees
• International payments: Direct transfers from the US and Europe at real conversion rates, targeting remote workers, freelancers, and expats
• Wealth management: Access to leading stocks and ETFs with zero trading fees, bringing Wall Street to users previously locked out of US markets
• High-yield accounts: Up to 4.5% annual earnings on deposits—substantially higher than local bank offerings in high-inflation economies
• Credit services: The Prestige credit card provides international purchasing power without forex markups

The platform supports deposits via CLABE (Mexico), CVU/Alias (Argentina), PSE (Colombia), and Pix (Brazil), integrating seamlessly with local payment infrastructure while offering stablecoin-powered cross-border rails.

Why Stablecoins Won Latin America​

Latin America's embrace of stablecoins isn't ideological—it's pragmatic survival in economies where currency devaluation can erase 50% of savings value in a year. Argentina's peso lost 90% of its value against the dollar between 2018 and 2023. Venezuela's bolivar experienced hyperinflation that made currency essentially worthless.

In this context, stablecoins like USDT and USDC aren't "crypto"—they're digital dollars.

The adoption statistics are staggering:

• 75% of Latin American institutional investors now allocate to stablecoins
• USDT dominates with 68% market share across the region
• Stablecoin transaction volumes grew 89% year-over-year to reach $324 billion in 2025

USDT emerged as the clear leader in high-inflation economies like Argentina and Venezuela, where users prioritize liquidity and exchange availability over regulatory compliance nuances. Meanwhile, USDC has gained traction in Mexico and Brazil thanks to strategic partnerships with fintech platforms like ARQ that emphasize regulatory compliance and institutional-grade infrastructure.

The remittance use case demonstrates stablecoins' practical superiority. Traditional services charge 6-8% in fees and take 3-5 days for settlement. Stablecoin transfers cost 1-2% (or less with direct peer-to-peer transactions) and settle in minutes. For a worker sending $500 monthly from the US to family in Colombia, that's $300-420 in annual savings—enough to pay for a month of groceries.

ARQ's Competitive Edge: Infrastructure Meets Compliance​

ARQ competes in a crowded fintech landscape that includes regional players like Bitso, Ripio, and international giants like Binance and Coinbase. Its differentiation comes from combining stablecoin infrastructure with regulated financial services.

The platform operates in four countries—Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia—each with distinct regulatory frameworks. Brazil's new stablecoin law provides the clearest path for compliant operations. Mexico's Fintech Law (enacted 2018) created a regulatory sandbox that ARQ has leveraged. Argentina's regulatory approach remains fragmented but pragmatic given the peso's instability. Colombia has taken a cautious stance, but remittance flows create permissive conditions for stablecoin adoption.

Kaszek Ventures, a prominent Latin American VC firm, participated in ARQ's previous funding rounds alongside Y Combinator. Kaszek's portfolio strategy reveals the infrastructure thesis: in January 2026, the firm co-led a $55 million Series C for Pomelo, a payments infrastructure company building stablecoin-native global cards and payment tokenization.

This points to a broader trend: Latin American fintech is leapfrogging traditional card networks and correspondent banking infrastructure by building on stablecoin rails from the ground up. ARQ benefits from timing—it's scaling as this infrastructure matures, rather than betting on unproven technology.

The company's $70 million raise will fund "new hires and expansion beyond dollar-denominated transfers," according to Terrés. This likely means:

1. Credit infrastructure: Launching lending products backed by stablecoin collateral
2. Geographic expansion: Entering Peru, Chile, and other Andean countries
3. B2B services: Offering treasury management and payment infrastructure to businesses
4. Institutional products: High-net-worth wealth management and corporate foreign exchange services

The Infrastructure Race: USDT vs USDC and Regulatory Convergence​

Two stablecoins dominate Latin America's market—Tether's USDT with 68% market share and Circle's USDC gaining institutional traction. Their competition reflects different strategies for emerging market adoption.

USDT built dominance through liquidity and exchange availability. Users in Argentina or Venezuela can find local buyers and sellers for USDT on peer-to-peer platforms within minutes.

This network effect creates self-reinforcing adoption: more users attract more liquidity, which attracts more users. Tether's approach prioritized accessibility over regulatory compliance, enabling rapid growth in markets where formal banking infrastructure is weak or unreliable.

USDC took a different path: partnering with regulated fintech platforms and emphasizing full reserve auditing and compliance frameworks. Circle's strategy aligns with institutional adoption and regulatory convergence. As Latin American governments implement stablecoin regulations—like Brazil's March 2026 law—USDC's compliance infrastructure becomes an advantage rather than overhead.

ARQ's business model depends on both. The platform must support USDT for users demanding maximum liquidity and USDC for customers prioritizing regulatory compliance and institutional credibility. This dual-stablecoin strategy mirrors the broader market: retail users favor USDT, while businesses and high-net-worth individuals increasingly prefer USDC.

The regulatory landscape is converging toward legitimacy. Brazil's stablecoin law mandates full reserves, licensed issuers, and consumer protections—mirroring frameworks in the US (GENIUS Act timeline) and EU (MiCA regulations). This convergence creates opportunities for platforms like ARQ that positioned themselves as compliant infrastructure from the start.

What ARQ's Success Means for Global Fintech​

Latin America has become the proving ground for stablecoin-native financial services. If ARQ can build a $10 billion+ transaction volume business serving 2 million users with stablecoin infrastructure, that model becomes exportable to other emerging markets facing similar currency instability and remittance flows.

Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe all share Latin America's characteristics: large diaspora populations sending remittances, currency instability, high mobile penetration, and distrust of traditional banks. The total addressable market for stablecoin-first banking extends well beyond Latin America's $161 billion annual remittance flows.

Sequoia and Founders Fund's $70 million bet on ARQ isn't just about Latin America—it's about staking a position in the infrastructure layer of global finance's next phase. If stablecoins become the dominant rails for cross-border payments and savings in emerging markets, the platforms facilitating access capture enormous value.

ARQ's rebranding from "DolarApp" to a broader identity reflects this ambition. The name change removes the dollar-centric limitation, enabling the company to expand into euro-denominated services, local currency products, and eventually cryptocurrency-adjacent offerings like tokenized securities or DeFi access.

The company's growth trajectory—from launch to $10 billion annualized volume in three years—suggests product-market fit at a profound level. Latin Americans aren't using ARQ because they love crypto or believe in decentralization. They're using it because it solves real problems: preserving purchasing power, accessing global financial markets, and sending money across borders cheaply and quickly.

The Path Forward: Consolidation or Fragmentation?​

The Latin American fintech landscape faces a strategic question: will stablecoin-based services consolidate into a few regional champions, or will fragmentation persist across national markets?

ARQ's four-country footprint (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia) positions it for regional dominance, but meaningful challenges remain. Each country has distinct regulatory frameworks, local payment systems, and competitive dynamics. Brazil's scale (211 million population, $318.8 billion in crypto flows) makes it an obvious priority, but Argentina's crisis-driven adoption (40%+ adult population using stablecoins) offers explosive growth potential.

Competitors aren't standing still. Bitso, a Mexican crypto exchange, has expanded across Latin America with regulatory licenses and local partnerships. Ripio operates in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay with a similar crypto-to-fiat strategy. International players like Binance and Coinbase offer stablecoin services with global scale and brand recognition.

ARQ's differentiator is its fintech-first positioning. Unlike crypto exchanges that added banking features, ARQ started as a banking app that uses crypto infrastructure. This matters for user acquisition: consumers don't want "crypto," they want better banking. ARQ's interface, messaging, and product design emphasize financial services over blockchain technology.

The $70 million from Sequoia and Founders Fund provides runway for aggressive expansion, but execution challenges loom:

1. Regulatory compliance: Navigating four (soon more) national frameworks with different licensing requirements, consumer protection rules, and capital requirements
2. Customer acquisition cost: Competing with established banks and crypto exchanges for digital-native users in competitive markets
3. Credit risk: Launching lending products backed by volatile crypto collateral requires sophisticated risk management
4. Technology infrastructure: Supporting multi-currency accounts, real-time foreign exchange, international payments, and wealth management at scale

Conclusion: Latin America as the Stablecoin Laboratory​

ARQ's $70 million raise validates a thesis that seemed radical just three years ago: stablecoins can become the foundational infrastructure for consumer finance in emerging markets. The company's growth from launch to $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, serving 2 million customers across four countries, proves that product-market fit exists at scale.

Latin America's unique combination of currency instability, massive remittance flows, high mobile penetration, and regulatory pragmatism makes it the ideal laboratory for stablecoin-native banking. The region's $324 billion in stablecoin transaction volume (2025) and 89% year-over-year growth demonstrate that this isn't a niche market—it's a fundamental shift in how money moves across borders and preserves value.

The projection that stablecoins will process more remittances than Western Union in Latin America by 2027 now seems conservative. With 75% of institutional investors allocating to stablecoins and countries like Argentina seeing 40%+ adult adoption, the infrastructure transition is accelerating faster than traditional players can respond.

ARQ's rebrand from DolarApp to a broader financial super app signals the next phase: moving beyond remittances and savings into credit, wealth management, and B2B services. If the company executes this expansion successfully, it won't just disrupt traditional remittance providers—it will challenge commercial banks as the primary financial relationship for Latin America's 650 million people.

For blockchain infrastructure providers, the ARQ story underscores a crucial insight: the most valuable applications of stablecoins aren't DeFi protocols or speculative trading—they're prosaic financial services that solve urgent problems for people living with currency instability. Latin America's embrace of stablecoins proves that when the alternative is watching your savings evaporate to inflation, "crypto" stops being crypto and becomes essential infrastructure.

Stablecoin-based financial infrastructure requires reliable blockchain APIs that can handle high transaction volumes across multiple chains and geographies. BlockEden.xyz provides enterprise-grade API access for Ethereum, Polygon, and other networks supporting stablecoin operations at scale.

Sources​

• Sequoia, Founders Fund Back $70 Million Raise for Latam's ARQ (DolarApp) - Bloomberg
• ARQ Raises $70 Million From Sequoia and Founders Fund to Expand Stablecoin Finance in Latin America - Blockonomi
• Stablecoins In Latin America 2026: $142B Remittance Market Drives Adoption Boom | MEXC
• 2025 LATAM Crypto Adoption: Latin America Emerges as Crypto Powerhouse - Chainalysis
• ARQ | Meet our new brand: ARQ
• Kaszek, YC back DolarApp's mission to 'dollarize' Latin America's finances with crypto | TechCrunch
• Pomelo raises $55 million Series C to accelerate the modernization of payments infrastructure | Insight Partners