The New Face Of Global Payments: Onchain Consumer Finance Apps

Benedetto Biondi is the CEO of Folks Finance, a leading crosschain lending protocol in DeFi.

​We’re used to everything in the world being globalized.

Goods and services are traded internationally every day. Millions of people cross borders daily. We can send a message to someone on the other side of the planet instantly. Anyone with a phone and an internet connection can open Google and access the same information as everyone else.

The internet is global by default. That’s what made it so powerful.

Paradoxically, the driver of globalization was left behind by globalization itself: money.

Money and finance are still not truly global.

Worldwide, 1.3 billion adults still lack a financial account. International transfers are often slow, expensive or simply inaccessible, depending on where you live.

The traditional financial system was never built as a global network. It was built country by country, bank by bank, payment rail by payment rail, then stitched together through correspondent banking relationships, middleware providers, regional systems and human coordination.

For decades, the financial industry attempted to improve this system incrementally: faster wires, more bank branches, larger ATM networks and better online banking portals. But, as the saying goes, the electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.

For real change to happen, you need the underlying infrastructure itself to change.

The emergence of onchain infrastructure represents this fundamental shift for money: internet-native financial rails that are global from inception rather than stitched together afterward.​

Most people still associate crypto and blockchain with speculation.

That’s fine, but stablecoins introduced a very different idea: a new financial rail, bringing dollars onto the internet in a way that can be embedded directly into software and accessed globally.

Today, more than $300 billion in stablecoins are in circulation, and last year, they processed $33 trillion in onchain transaction volume, surpassing the combined $25.5 trillion handled by Visa and Mastercard in the same period.

Every person wants access to stable money, cheaper global payments and financial products that work internationally. Stablecoins happen to be extremely good at that.

Regulatory clarity accelerated this transition further. The GENIUS Act gave stablecoins a more defined regulatory framework in the U.S. and unlocked a new wave of builder energy.

Because of this, the more important story is not stablecoins themselves. It is the proliferation of financial consumer applications now being built on top of onchain rails rather than domestic banking systems alone.

These products are often referred to as “crypto neobanks,” though the term is somewhat inaccurate. Neobanks, fintechs and banks typically operate as licensed financial institutions inside heavily localized regulatory frameworks.

A more accurate description would be to call them crypto-native consumer apps that provide a trusted path into digital dollars, and then make them useful every day: save with yield, spend with a card, send instantly and settle across borders without friction. The product surface looks familiar. The efficiency and simplicity enabled by the infrastructure underneath are what's new.

These applications abstract the complexity of crypto and DeFi and embrace the principle that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. History suggests that the technologies that win are often the ones users barely notice. A user does not need to understand stablecoin issuance or settlement finality to benefit from them. a16z crypto, one of the largest VC funds investing in blockchain startups, defined this as "the WhatsApp moment for money."

The clearest wedge is not in markets where banking already works well. It is in cross-border use cases and emerging markets, where access to dollars, yield and efficient money movement create real value. A freelancer in Argentina, a remote worker in Nigeria or a small-business owner in Southeast Asia may not care about blockchain as a category. They care about stable dollars, lower FX costs, fast settlement and products that work globally rather than being trapped by local banking fragmentation.

Everyone has noticed. DeFi projects are expanding by integrating their existing infrastructure into consumer apps to reach mainstream users. Major crypto exchanges have spent the past two years repositioning: Binance Pay reportedly powers more than 20 million merchants globally, and Coinbase offers yield on USDC balances directly inside their app.

Fintechs are adding crypto. Crypto projects are adding neobank features. All with the goal to converge on a single end state: a unified consumer financial application.

Proving this, MrBeast, the massively popular YouTuber, has filed trademarks for a neobanking app. Elon Musk is launching X Money. Whop recently introduced stablecoin balances with yield. Cash App introduced stablecoin transfers. The list goes on.

It’s clear that the opportunity to build real value thanks to the efficiency of onchain technology is enormous, yet most players are fighting the same battle, burning cash to outbid each other on cash-back campaigns to pull users away from competitors.

According to a16z crypto: "The companies that will win this race aren't necessarily the ones with the best product today. They're the ones that will combine distribution and trust with offerings that can match customer demand.​"​

From my experience building Folks Mobile, several distribution opportunities stood out during our analysis. One example: Most of the current attention is on card infrastructure, while QR payments remain overlooked despite being the dominant payment rail across Asia.

For the first time, money is inheriting the properties that made the internet powerful: global access, instant distribution and software-native infrastructure. Most users will never think about blockchain, just as they never think about TCP/IP when sending a message. They will simply use financial products that work better.

And while much of the attention today is focused on human customers, these same rails are also suited for a future where AI agents transact autonomously. Programmable financial rails are far more compatible with AI software-driven commerce than traditional, fragmented banking systems.

The companies building on this infrastructure today will define the next era of global finance.

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