Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya, chief technology officer at fintech infrastructure provider BKN301, argues that the familiar payment card, rather than a new wallet experience, is the most likely route for stablecoins into everyday spending. He joined BKN301 after serving as CTO at Klar, a digital financial services platform in Mexico, and before that at BlockFi.

For Paolini-Subramanya, the trajectory matters more than the total. “I believe it’s the shape of the curve that matters more than the headline number,” he said. “Three years ago, stablecoin card spending was a fraction of where it is today; now, in a single month, it has passed $1 billion.”

He sees the spending coming increasingly from people and businesses for whom a balance pegged to the US dollar “solves a real problem that local banking doesn’t, such as workers and small businesses across Africa and the Middle East facing currency instability, costly remittance corridors, and/or thin banking infrastructure.”

“Tellingly, the fastest-growing markets aren’t necessarily the most crypto-native; they’re often the ones where the payments pain is sharpest and where there is enough regulatory clarity for banks to plug in lawfully,” he said. In his view, regulation “has been as important to this growth as the technology itself.”

Cards, he argues, have already solved two of the hardest problems in payments: merchant acceptance and consumer trust. “Tens of millions of merchants already accept cards, and consumers understand how they work, including disputes, liability, and loss protection,” he said.

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