Money Code
The future of finance is digital. Welcome to Money Code, the show that decodes stablecoins and the evolution of programmable money for builders, investors, and decision-makers. Each week, join hosts Chuk Okpalugo, Author of Stablecoin Blueprint and Raj Parekh, Head of Payments/Stablecoins at Monad Foundation as they break down the systems and strategies of seasoned operators in the space, revealing the insights you need for better build and buy decisions.
Money Code
The Future of Remittances w/ Mark Lenhard (Zepz)
Presented by Stablecon Media and Powered by BVNK
In episode 7 of Money Code, we speak with Mark Lenhard, CEO of Zepz Group, the parent company behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, to explore the evolution of remittances and the role of stablecoins in transforming financial services. We discuss the challenges of traditional remittance systems, and how remittances are shifting from one-off transfers to consumer wallets: sending digital dollars that users can hold, save, and spend, unlocking savings, credit, and other services across the Global South.
Learn more about the newly released Sendwave Wallet (https://zepz.io/press/zepz-launches-sendwave-wallet-to-give-customers-the-power-of-stablecoins-in-everyday-transactions/)
Connect with the Hosts & Guest
Chuk Okpalugo: LinkedIn, X, stablecoinblueprint.com
Raj Parekh: LinkedIn, X, monad.xyz
I don't want to belittle or diminish the benefits of all that. I think that's all phenomenal, but it's dwarfed by the second one. The real impact, and really, for all the folks out there that have been following blockchain and crypto for a long time, I think the first real use case for stable coins, which is how do we fundamentally impact the lives of end users of consumers in the global south? Folks that are dealing with real problems every day in terms of the value that they hold.
Chuk Okpalugo:This is MoneyCode. It's a show where we decode stablecoins and programmable money so that you can better prepare for an on-chain future. I'm Chuck Okpalugo, your host and author of Stablecoin Blueprint, and I'm here with my co-host Raj Parekh, head of Stablecoins and Payments at Monad. How are you doing today, Raj?
Raj Parekh:I'm doing amazing. We have a super fun guest today.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yes, today we're joined by Mark Leonhard, CEO of Zepz Group, the parent company powering leading global payments brands World Remit and Sendwave. Mark is a finance and tech veteran with decades of experience in leadership roles at firms such as Bill.com, Magento, which is an e-commerce platform acquired by Adobe for $1.7 billion, as well as JP Morgan Chase and PayPal. So thanks for joining us, Mark. How are you? I'm doing well, thank you.
Mark Lenhard:And thanks guys for having me on the show. Really excited to be here.
Chuk Okpalugo:Awesome. So before we dive into the show, a quick note here Money Code is brought to you by Stablecoin Media and powered by BVNK. The views and opinions of the hosts and guests are their own and may not represent their companies. Nothing we discussed today constitutes investment advice or any other form of advice. Okay, so let's dive in just to give folks some background on the history of Zepz and World Remit and SendWave, how they come together, and the strategic rationale for those two brands being separate. I'm good to stop there.
Mark Lenhard:Absolutely. And again, really excited to be here. As as you mentioned, Zepz has really brought together two brands, two great brands in the remittance world, cross-border payments, both World Remit and SendWave. And they've evolved together. We've really brought them together into one powerful brand and platform to serve our migrant communities all over the world.
Raj Parekh:And maybe we can talk about just even like the sheer scale of Zepz and World Remit today. I mean, remittance is obviously a larger payment corridor, but maybe just like talk about where like the origin story and just even the scale at which you guys operate today. I don't think people have a full appreciation of that sometimes, too.
Mark Lenhard:We we really serve our call at the customer set we serve is really 300 plus million migrants all over the world. But both SenWave and World Remit evolved as remittance companies that were serving some of the hardest to serve markets in the world. And so really helping migrants, both from the US and Europe, when they were both founded, to send money back to Africa. And I'm sure we'll get into it, but really some of the hardest to serve markets, really making it easy and transparent for our migrants to send money back home to their friends and families. And so got started really with humble beginnings, really with a vision. It was incredibly difficult to send money back home to those places. It was incredibly expensive. It wasn't transparent, it would take days, but effectively evolved into digital remittance companies that enable you to send money as quick and easy from a couch, you know, almost instantly back to friends and family back home at very transparent pricing and very fair, competitive uh pricing. And so now process billions and billions of dollars serving millions of customers all over the world, helping not only send money back to Africa, but also to Latin America and Asia and are growing all the time in both our core markets, but also expanding uh those markets to 100 plus markets today.
Chuk Okpalugo:Maybe for folks who don't understand exactly why was sending remittances back to those markets particularly hard. And maybe we can go through just how does a remittance work if we could go maybe with a typical $200 transfer from when somebody in the UK maybe sends it back to say Ghana, uh, how does that work? What are all the various different costs and things that you've solved? Yeah.
Mark Lenhard:Let me start by telling you how it works today. Um and and but then I'll I'll back up a little bit to what it was. Like quite frankly, uh, you know, as of of a few years ago, and unfortunately, not enough of the volume is actually transacting the way I'm I'm gonna describe here first. There's still a huge, huge segment of the market that uh finds it a lot more difficult to send money. So that's part of our mission is to get that online in the digital world. But the way it works today is you download an app, you go through a KYC procedure with us, and then you can very quickly, just like you were buying something online at an e-commerce store, uh, you can transact and send money, you know, as little as a dollar or tens of thousands of dollars back home to friends and family, uh, where they can instantly or near instantly, you know, within a few minutes, receive that money halfway across the world in a totally different market. And they're able to either have that money sent directly into a recipient's bank account, uh, they can have it sent directly into a mobile money account, like with MPESA or an MTN account or an orange account, or they can go down to a local cash pickup spot. Um, and we have hundreds of partners all over the world that will need you to go pick up local cash or in some cases US dollars in those received markets. And so within a matter of minutes, you can literally send money all the way across the world and have your friends, your family, your recipient go and receive that money. The whole process is incredibly transparent. Um, in the few areas where we do charge fees, that's all very transparent up front. Um, and certainly the exchange rate you're getting is very, very transparent up front. That's the way it works with us today. As of a few years ago, if you try to do similar transactions, not on us, and in many cases today, we try to do it through a bank. Um, you may try to do it through a different service, or you may try to do it through friends and family and um what's typically referred to as wall off through through WhatsApp groups and other things, you get a very, very different experience. And that experience is not transparent and can be incredibly slow. And so you may go have to figure out where you want to send the money to, but then you don't get very clear and accurate pricing on what the FX rate is going to be, and you don't know exactly when it's gonna settle. So it can take up to a few days to settle. And even with some of the big names today in the markets we serve, still have this experience. And so you may not be told exactly what the fees will come out to and certainly what the FX rate will be for a couple of days until that money actually settles. And it's because of the ecosystem we built behind there that's incredibly, incredibly difficult to maintain and operate, um, but gives you a much more transparent and customer-friendly uh experience. And so what you end up, you end up with an experience where you're sending $200, uh, you don't know how much currency your recipient's gonna receive, um, and you don't know what fees you're gonna be charged in the process. Um, so you don't know exactly, for instance, how much Kenyan shillings they're gonna get, and you don't know when to tell your recipient the money's gonna land uh for a few days. Um and ultimately the recipient will be able to tell you how much money they get, but you won't even be notified about that amount. Your recipient will tell you and you won't know exactly how much um that was in fees until then. So it's a very difficult experience, not transparent, and I can tell you it would be much, much more costly than with uh with us.
Chuk Okpalugo:Aaron Powell Right. And and so there's a very clear problem here, and a huge number of of uh folks want to send money back home where it's super valuable for all sorts of things like uh groceries, uh healthcare costs, and other kind of day-to-day things. Uh so it's very, very important. But as you said, it's a very slow, not transparent uh system. And with the world rebint and sun wave, you mentioned it's a minutes and it's very transparent. But you also mentioned and what I'd love to get into is the complexity of what you've had to build to make that possible. So maybe you could work through what is in the infrastructure that you set up to enable such a seamless process.
Mark Lenhard:That is that is a fundamental question around remittances and why they're so difficult generally with some folks, and why we at ZEPS have made it uh have made it really easy and transparent uh going forward. When you're sending money halfway across the world, there are a few key pieces uh that make the process very challenging. The first, uh you've got the rails themselves. So I'm sure we'll get a little bit into stable coins in a bit, but um, fiat, uh you've got to send that through existing banking systems, right? So you're using a Swift network, you've got a bank on the uh on the sender side, and you've got a bank on the receiving side, and in many cases, you'll have banks in between as you send it around the world. And so you've got to maintain a very robust, uh compliant banking infrastructure uh that you're able to send, send that money and actually move the money from one location to another. In that process, it may not always be transparent one how long it's gonna take, what the fees are involved, and what ultimately the uh exchange rates you will receive are that we would receive as we move through that. So one is just the rails. Two is we are a scaled business. We pride ourselves on being uh fully compliant in all the markets we operate. And so having a robust compliance infrastructure to make sure we're moving that money safely and securely at all times through the various jurisdictions that we operate is really important. And so we maintain a series of licenses, particularly in our CEN markets, maintain a robust compliance security infrastructure to ensure that we're moving that money safely and securely. And then the third piece is really being able to get and offer some of the best in class exchange rates and FX exchange rates that we offer our customers, we need to be able to source that currency uh in local markets. And so having a robust treasury team and operations to ensure that we're we're always buying and sourcing that currency at competitive rates so we can pass those rates on to our customers is really important. And so all three of those components at any point in time is hard to maintain and manage, and they all have to come together so that we can enable that experience to our customers. And it also means if you think about it, since we're moving the money in a matter of minutes, the infrastructure we have today doesn't move money in a matter of minutes. So we need to think ahead and we need to, in in uh many cases, forecast out moves that we think our customers are going to make and the volumes our customers are gonna make and need to move that money ahead of time for them so that it's sitting there waiting for them in the local markets that we're serving and they want to send money to so that we can pay that out in near real time.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, that level of like projection and forecasting, but also managing the like the long tail currencies and the different jurisdictions that you guys are managing also, that's just like a beast of an operation. I guess like maybe like talk us through just like how do you guys think about the geo coverage and like expansion opportunities across more markets? Like, how do you guys go deeper into like enabling that infrastructure to then, you know, we'll obviously talk about stable coins, you know, in a in a little bit here, but maybe just like talk us through like historically, how have you guys, you know, using the fiat system today, think about global expansion across all these different markets, knowing that you have to get the compliance, the treasury, the liquidity, like all those things set up.
Mark Lenhard:Yeah, it's a great question. We we ultimately are really here to serve our customers, right? Both our our migrant customers that we're sending money to as well as those recipients, because we feel a strong mission to really improve their lives and bring a lot of the prosperity, if you think about it, our customers, our senders have picked up and moved halfway across the world, right, for in many cases a better life to earn some more money so that they can create better opportunities and better lives for themselves, but also for their friends and family and extended families and friends back home. And so the way we look at the world is how can we have a bigger impact, right? Both on the core countries we're in today, but also expanding to other countries. And what we find is we can have the biggest impact in, quite frankly, some of the hardest markets to do, what I just described a minute ago. And so in places that it's hard to transfer money to, where settlement times may take days and cash and transit times maybe up to a week or more, particularly around fund banking holidays, we find is a bigger opportunity for us because we can have a bigger impact on our customers and the users that we're serving. And so we look at it as how do we continue to deepen the exposure we've got in the existing countries, which in many cases we are double-digit percentages of the GDP of those countries because we're sending back so much money. Uh, it is in many cases one of the biggest export economies, if you will, is people for a lot of our markets and sending money back home, hard currency is super important for those local economies. But then more broadly, as we think about expanding out, where are there other opportunities? Um, in particular where FX volatility is very high because those individuals, you know, really it's not only the countries themselves, but individuals that rely on hard currency to, you know, buy Chuck, as you mentioned earlier, the food, the healthcare, the education, to support themselves and live their daily lives. And so we look at for those opportunities that we can do and expand out. And so we've had phenomenal experience within Africa where there's seed market where we got started, um, but are also finding great opportunities, as you can imagine, in Latin America and Asia as well, where they have similar issues with FX volatility and just getting access to the hard currency.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, that's super cool. I mean, I I don't think I fully appreciated like the the impact of GDP with reminses until you actually just said it right here. So I think that's like uh that's like a powerful piece right there. You know, how are you just even getting into like the stable coin story a bit further? I mean, how have you been able to, and you know, Chuck and I were joking before this that, you know, Mark has seen it all in the fintech space? Like you've you've been through a lot of different iterations of of fintech. How are you able to kind of take you know what historically has been there with fiat and fintech? And now, like, you know, you guys are thinking about innovating with like new products and services in the future. Like, how have you been able to think through that that journey? After that, we can I would love to dive into like your perspective on stable coins also, but maybe we can just start there, balancing the innovation versus you know what's been happening historically as well.
Mark Lenhard:Uh well, thanks for that. I I certainly I don't think I've seen it all yet. I was arrogant about 15 years ago to think, oh, payments is dead. What other industries should I think about going into? And uh I was uh sorely uh disappointed in so much has happened over the last decade or more. But I've never been more bullish on what's going to happen in the future. Uh, I think there is so much change to come. I've certainly been following, you know, crypto, blockchain, stable coins for a while now, but full transparency, I've never been more bullish on where we are, particularly when it when it comes to stable coins. I think we're very much moving off of the bleeding edge, if you will, more into the leading edge of where I see a real, particularly in our business, a real use case for stable coins. And ultimately, and I think this is the most important thing, the real impact it can have on end users and consumers, and how it can fundamentally change their lives. Um, and so we could talk a lot more about it, but I think there is um there's a real opportunity here uh and we're certainly starting to see it in our business. And I'm really excited to uh to impact more end users and consumers' lives in ways that um, you know, certainly our core business and fiat has been able to help, but I think we can take it to a whole nother level with uh stable coins.
Chuk Okpalugo:So, yeah, let's let's break it down. You mentioned lots of different areas that make up the complex operations from funding ahead of time when there's three or four days of the weekend or especially over a holiday to balance, calculating how much volume there's going to be. Now you've got different currencies and effects to manage, then there's all the compliance and user uh acquisition, branding, go to market, uh, let alone then making sure that you have the last smile with either banks or mobile money. So already seems like there's a tremendous amount of areas where stable coins could have an impact. Uh, where do you see stablecoins truly adding value uh and where are they still not quite ready? Yeah.
Mark Lenhard:I'm glad you appreciate how complex uh our business is. Uh I wish I wish everybody did, but thank you. I appreciate it. In full transparency, uh stablecoins isn't making our lives easier. It's actually increasing the complexity of our business. As bullish as I am on stable coins, they're not going to eliminate the need for fiat currency overnight, right? Maybe ever. And so in the meantime, we're adding another flow, if you will, another currency, maybe several currencies, into already, you know, quite a number of send and receive currencies that we have to manage on a daily basis. Not to mention it's a different rail for all intents and purposes. It's a different thing to manage, which is very distinct from the existing fiak system and the banking infrastructure and the SWIFT system. So both technology and people operations and how it how it interacts. So it will increase complexity. But I think there's two real benefits that it makes it worth it, right? Um, certainly as volumes grow and scale, which you know, we can talk about, but will not probably happen overnight, but will steadily and increase over time. The first one's talked about a lot and has been the major focus of stable coins, but quite frankly, I think it's the much smaller one. To date, a lot of people talk about cash and transit times and costs of the moving the money, uh, the ability to do it 24-7 and settle at any point and know that the money's going to settle instantly or, you know, within a few seconds in real time, which by the way, I love all of it because there are core problems in our existing business today for sure, and are are massive problems in many of the markets that we operate. Not really huge benefits if you're in the UK or the US or Europe. There are some benefits, don't get me wrong, but they're even amplified by 10 or 100 times in a lot of the markets we operate. So I don't want to belittle or diminish the benefits of all that. I think that's all phenomenal, but it's dwarfed by the second one, which is the real impact that, and really for all the folks out there that have been following blockchain and crypto for a long time, I think the first real use case for stable coins, uh, which is how do we fundamentally impact the lives of end users, of consumers, not necessarily in what I would refer to as the global north, so the US, the UK, Europe, um, Australia, but how does it really impact folks in the global south? Folks that are dealing with real problems every day in terms of the value that they hold. Many folks in these markets are obviously holding local currency. This local currency is depreciating at anywhere from 10 to 50% a year, uh depending on the year and the local macro environment. And so they're faced with every day prices going up and the value of the currency they hold going down. Um, and so the real benefit for a lot of our end users is being able to hold something of value they can count on. And potentially even over time, earning yield on that value, that more stable value, um, so that they're able to build real wealth. It would be for the first time that many are able to do that. Without that opportunity, they're left with their local currency that may be in the banking infrastructure that actually charges as opposed to helps them earn money, but charges on that money, not to mention the value of that currency going down. And so there's very little incentive for those individuals to build value and wealth over time. It's actually the opposite, right? It's it's they're better off spending that money as quickly as possible in spending it so they can they can buy hard assets, they can buy real things, whether it's food, it's a car, it's a house, whatever it may be, so that they can protect themselves against that devaluation and or the cost of holding that money. And so for us at ZEPS, we are super excited about moving from not only helping our users and our customers to save money on the cost of our mittance, the cost of transfer, but actually move more fully to help the global south get more and more of that prosperity and hold on to it and build well. And we really see stablecoin as a phenomenal opportunity to really accelerate our mission uh and really move move to a broader audience, uh, but also broaden the uh the product suite that we're able to offer them.
Chuk Okpalugo:That's awesome. Uh and I think to break it down, uh the way I understand it at least is look, the mission is to serve the users. And these end users today are we're talking about how remittance is driving prosperity in these local markets. But today, once the money is remitted, it's kind of like out of the system. It's now in local currency and it has to be spent in whichever local markets. And blockchain and stablecoin enable you to essentially provide dollar accounts or like hard asset accounts, but today it's the dollar, you know, in most of these markets. Uh and that's a whole new value proposition, still serving that end user, but helping them with that prosperity. And now there's some FX in there, of course, because whenever they need to spend locally, they'll still need to offer up to local currency, but they can hold in dollars and participate in you mentioned savings and I guess the sort of things. Is that how you're thinking about it?
Mark Lenhard:Yeah, absolutely. And I expand a bit on that. And and I like to say you can't still can't largely eat stablecoin, right? Which is my way of saying, you know, our our customers are everyday people, right? It's the six billion people in the global south that, you know, they're living their everyday lives. They need to eat, they need to put their kids through school, they need to go to the doctor, they need to go to the hospital. And stable coin is great for helping build value, but ultimately they need to, they need to spend that money. And so what we're really excited about is being able to provide that opportunity for them to store and build value, but then also be able to go about and live their lives, right? Um, and be able to feed their families and and really help them prosper in ways that um they haven't necessarily been able to fully to date.
Chuk Okpalugo:Aaron Powell So maybe if we could just describe how that would work. I think um, you know, responsibly on this on on various channels about remittance is changing. And we're going away from sending fiat, and that gets converted to fiat, and now just sending dollars. It's the most liquid, you know, most highly exchanged in the FX world currency, and obviously it's the kind of it is the unit of account in many African countries, at least given what we're talking about. Is it the case that you know in the apps like World Remit and SendWave has, the user will send dollars or will they send their local currency, or will they will the sender make the choice? Maybe just talk through what the user experience would look like.
Mark Lenhard:So the experience we'll talk about is is alive in a lot of our markets today. So we don't like to make a lot of hey about things until we're out there and actually delivering the customer experience. So really, really excited about it. As I said, it's fundamentally changing both who we are but what we can do for our customers. And so what you can do today, I'll go through the simple user experience with a lot more going on behind the scenes. But uh the the very simple experience is we talk about enabling people to send digital dollars back home, right? And those digital dollars are effectively their circles USDC. Um, and so what you're able to do is as a as a sender today, instead of sending money that I talked about earlier, and let's say it's the Naira, you're sending the Naira back in, they can go pick it up at Cash Point, uh, they can have it sent to their bank account or send it to a mobile wallet. We enable the sender to send USDC. Um, and so the individual in the market would download an app and the recipient would get USDC in that app. Um, and they could see that that they've got value there, they've got $100 worth of digital coin of USDC. And then when they're ready, when they're ready to spend that money, when they want to convert that into food, into healthcare, into education, they can go ahead and exit that money out of the system all the ways that they can exit today. And we enable folks to do, but they get full control over it. They can control when they want to do that, how often they want to do that, um, so they can maintain that money in um in the dollar for as long as they want to, and then convert that. And maybe they want some of it in cash, maybe they want some to their bank account, maybe they want some to their mobile money account, but they have the full choice to do that. And the stable coin and the infrastructure around it enables us to do that and provide that experience to give full control to our customers, but also be able to do that and serve our customers on much smaller dollar amounts, right? Typically, you know, one of the innovations that in par with stablecoin and what we're doing is enabling you to do that, but do it, you know, not on $100,000 or $10,000, being able to do that on small dollars so that we can serve anyone around the world, which is a huge benefit of stablecoin and the infrastructure we build, to be able to do it on small dollar transactions, which is obviously hugely beneficial and opens up, uh, you want to talk about financial inclusion, it opens up the world to being able to have access to these products and services that haven't before. In part it was customer acquisition, and part of it was just regulatory, and part of it was the technology. But a lot of it has to do with the economics behind it and really being able to open up those economics and share all those benefits with people and and and include them in the true digital financial world is just, it's it's phenomenal. It's awesome. And we're really proud of it at Zeppes and super excited about how fundamentally a lot of financial services are going to change, not just in SEN markets, right? Um, but more broadly across the global south.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because I mean, at the same time, like, you know, the scale that what you guys operate with, what you're saying is that you can offer, you know, dollars across all the markets that, you know, Roll the Remitt and SunWave are in today, and then you could fundamentally change like the whole remins experience as well. That's like that's that's fascinating. I mean, I'm curious if you can touch on like how do you expect the percentage or maybe the exchange of transfer of dollars predominantly as part of the remins flow versus like other currencies? And like what are some like what's like some immediate feedback that you're hearing from from users also on, you know, obviously they may not know what stable coins or blockchains are. I think what you're describing is a fully abstracted experience away that the user won't really have to even know how this technology works, but you guys can provide like the best in class experience around it. But maybe you can share just a little bit more of like what you expect, how this evolves, and like any just like user feedback that you're seeing as well.
Mark Lenhard:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're we're obviously really excited about it in part because it really fundamentally changed. There's not really a remittance, and it's not just a remittance anymore, right? It's more fundamental than that. It's like, how are we changing financial services for both our senders and our recipients and really broadly across, particularly across the uh the global south? So hearing lots of things from users, as you can imagine, but I expect we've really just just touched the surface, right? I expect a lot of interesting things to come out of this in ways that we can't expect. Ultimately, our users, as I mentioned earlier, you know, can't eat stable coins, right? And our our users need to eat, right? They are they are ordinary citizens or ordinary users. And so ultimately, I expect a lot of the money to get converted. And that's what we're seeing today. Like people, people need to need to use it. Over time, they may build up, you know, savings accounts and some wealth that will help cushion, right? We all have different needs at different times, unanticipated expenses, et cetera. A lot of our our customers don't have that cushion today, right? So, how do we go help build that cushion um so they don't have to rely on other means, can be more self-sufficient, but also get access to a lot of the financial services that, you know, certainly the three of us take for granted on a daily basis. So we can improve those lives and enable them to take care of themselves when those, when those emergencies come up. So I expect them to build more over time for those types of things. But ultimately, a lot of this makes its way into the normal financial fiat currency systems. That may change over time as the use and acceptance of stable coins uh accelerates. But uh, I'm not smart enough to predict when and how all of those things will happen. Our goal right now is to make sure the benefits of stable coins are really realized by everyone around the world.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah. And one thing that I really like about what you just said is uh I guess you mentioned it earlier, is uh you're describing it as digital dollars. Aaron Powell Stablecoins. And I think that's really important. I think those of us in the stablecoin space, we kind of know it's a bit of a strange term, actually. It's not uh that intuitive as to why it should be called that. And uh I think digital dollars are much more accessible and uh relevant.
Mark Lenhard:Aaron Powell I I think the the education piece is super important with our customers and the technology we built in in partnership with Portal along the way, but also in working with Circle is really to try to make it as easy and we we want to certainly be transparent to our customers. They should have the ability to understand fully what's happening. But ultimately, as we all know, using blockchains and crypto and stable coins can be incredibly complicated, involve long keys and uh very difficult customer experiences that most of our customers, many of who are not super tech savvy, couldn't support uh and couldn't understand. And so we're definitely spending a lot of time educating our customers, trying to make it simple. And just like we made the remittance experience, want to do the same thing with the digital dollar experience. Um, and so we expect how we talk about how do we interact with it to very much evolve, much like the use cases will evolve, but we want to meet our customers where they are and make sure they're getting all the benefits uh of what we built.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, absolutely. Education is definitely key and it's a it's a long journey. Um, but as you mentioned, that it'll be folks will become more and more accustomed to some of these nuances over time, but ideally they don't have to because the UX is just so smooth. So want to take a quick moment here to thank our sponsors. Every business needs a stablecoin strategy. And if you're looking for the best place to start, that's BVNK. BVNK is the world's leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, reach new markets, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Global licensing and compliance are covered, so you can build with confidence. Learn more at bvnk.com. Okay, thank you to our sponsors. Um, so we just had a great chat about thinking through how remittance is changing and how blockchain has stable. And enables you to provide value directly to the end user. And I think what's really interesting there is that that's a parallel to how we're seeing flows move in maybe other use cases where the recipient or the platform that owns the receipt of funds has an opportunity to be the kind of main port of call for that user. So if you're a merchant acquirer, we're seeing a lot of innovation across merchant acquirers to be merchant banking and business bank accounts. And for typical consumer wallets, maybe exchanges, where users are using a lot spending a lot of their time there and seeing their funds accrue in investments, exchange wallets can become consumer super apps. And I think what's interesting about those is that this is a very similar approach here where the remittance use cases, remittance is part of their main flow of income. And so that's the first part of where money's coming in, and then it's there. And before they move it or spend it out, you're saying, hey, look, I can provide you with a lot of value. And so I'm just I just thought that was an interesting kind of thread that we're seeing across lots of different use cases. Where the money lands, that's the first opportunity to provide this uh kind of financial dashboard if you're a business or really uh super app if you're a consumer. And so are you thinking of it in that way as well? And I'm thinking beyond having a dollar account, once you have dollar stable coins and you get access to essentially all of the other innovation that's happening on the blockchain, particularly in DeFi. And I know that's quite, you know, it could be risky and there's lots of innovation and and also lots of compliance to get into. But once you have a dollar account or a dollar stablecoin account, you then have access to potentially other forms of yield, lending and borrowing, access to US stocks, access to crypto and other investments. You know, what starts up as a, hey, here's a place to hold a more stable currency, ends up becoming almost consumer banking. Is that kind of the long-term vision? Is that how you think of it?
Mark Lenhard:I think you should write my roadmap, Chuck. You're definitely in line with how we're thinking about things at ZEPS. I think there's a massive opportunity, both because of the technology and stable coins, but also as you think about it, as you said, who holds the money can ultimately win, right? Or can it can ultimately dictate uh a lot of what happens next, right? And so we see remittances and the funds that we're sending into these markets as a huge opportunity, both in combination with stable coins, to build out a broader suite of products and services to customers, quite frankly, that don't have access or certainly don't have access in the same way uh and under the same terms that a lot of us in the global north take advantage of each and every day across a broad spectrum of things, whether that's being credit cards and payment vehicles, whether that's uh savings accounts, you know, investments and ways to earn yield, whether that's you know, ways to get lending and loans when we need it for that emergency or for bigger items at affordable, fair rates. Oh, and insurance products, like how do I protect myself from major events that happen that you know we take, we we generally take for granted. And we just see this massive opportunity in combination with the uh with the technology, but also our ability to acquire customers in the global south, right? Because we are sending this money back. And it's hard, right? If you combination of low cost to ultimately provide the ongoing through technology and the low cost to acquire the customers, you can do some really, really interesting stuff together that enable us to serve this broader customer base in ways that, quite frankly, I can't even imagine today. But I know the core needs that they have and the ways to solve that. But if we've got the customer, we've got the funds, and we've got this awesome technology, which we haven't talked about the programmatability of it yet, but there are ways that I'm not even smart enough to think of yet. I can think of a lot of core use cases, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff that we can add on top of that. And it all comes down to how do we serve these customers who are so deserving of these services, of this protection, of this opportunity to build wealth and yield. But then just until now, you haven't been able, just there isn't a way to do it economically that makes sense, right? And I really see a lot of these fundamentals coming together to serve these folks in ways that completely, you know, coming together a lot of things that over the last 10 or 20 years are finally, finally coming together. And that's why I'm more bullish than ever of what can happen and goes well beyond remittances, but into how do we really bring not to be too cliche, but how do you bring the rest of the world in, you know, with in into a financial inclusion manner and product and services that makes makes a ton of sense for them. And it will fundamentally change the economy, economies of these, of these markets uh and enable economic growth like I think they've never seen before.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, I mean, there's like a few things you've said, Mark, that's like I think kind of fundamentally broke my frame a little bit. I mean, one is like you mentioning like double-digit GDP impact that remins has make. That that initially was like, okay, that's super interesting. As you're talking about like potential future roadmap items for SunWave and World Remit, it also just like gets me thinking, like, you guys are just scratching the surface and like what's possible. And you know, on the surface, you may argue like, you know, Zepp's World Remits been around for 15 years, established, you know, Remins Company. But like the way you're describing just like the future, like tells me that you guys are really just scratching the surface. I mean, like, what's what's prompting you to like shift to like your thinking? Because you know, you could argue like Remins companies will always be there, and you know, there's a lot of other brands that are out there. Like, what's kind of pushing you to say, and establishing yourself as the leader in this category, but also kind of projecting ahead where you're kind of fundamentally rethinking like what remins companies even mean as well.
Mark Lenhard:Well, and we we never like to sit on our laurels, right? We like to break glass, change the game, and constantly innovate, try to be on the forefront of what's going on. But ultimately, it all comes back to our customers. We see their pain every day, and we solve one problem, right? We've made it incredibly, you know, quite frankly, I won't name the markets, but my home market included, it's a lot easier for me to send money to Kenya sometimes than it is for me to pay pay folks down the street. And so we fundamentally and a lot more work to do and expand that core business, but really solve that, solve that problem. But we see such a huge opportunity in uh, you know, as I mentioned, really helping helping our customers, particularly in the global south. How do they build wealth? How do they get access to basic financial services we just talked about that either might be too expensive from traditional means and they don't have access to it, or in many markets, just doesn't really exist at the scale they can take advantage of. And that drives us each and every day to do that. And, you know, just like we helped reinvent the remittance market, we now see an opportunity with stable coins to go reinvent many other markets and see our core business as a way to accelerate into that. So it's the combination of the new tech plus our core business that we really see this gigantic opportunity that, you know, is ours for the taking and why we launched our wallet into the global south while we're while we're um really bullish on and sending digital dollars today, both for our core infrastructure, but really, as I mentioned, more importantly, for our end users and the impact we're gonna have there.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, it's fascinating. And I think we always talk about how stablecoins and blockchains are really bringing down the cost of launching financial services and democratizing access to financial services. From a business perspective, it also makes it challenging because that means lots of people can compete. And where do you win? Because the technology is becoming commoditized, which is good for competition. But from a business perspective, okay, now I've got to differentiate differently on what else or what are my kind of moats that I have. And I think what's interesting about being a 10, 15-year remittance company, finance requires a lot of trust. And you've built up trust, you've built up a brand name, folks recognize it, it's just you know household names. And that is a great advantage to then launch uh some of these financial services from. And therefore, the distribution advantage that you know SendWave and World Remit has is the launch pad, as you say, to then say, by the way, actually we can go and launch a lot of these services that weren't possible. We now have access to these end users in a way that and the with a brand that a newcomer wouldn't necessarily have. And that gives you kind of a leg up. Uh and so actually it's making me rethink about the existing incumbents who actually do have that brand as a very, very strong advantage to then launch products from as long as they can execute on, you know, working with the various different infrastructure providers to get those products to market and meet the customers where they are. And and so it's a I'm excited to see how uh how the market evolves. Is it the new companies who will innovate quickly and launch net new things, or is it the existing companies who have the distribution and already who have the trust? Uh are there other elements of that that that are missing? What else is important in that equation?
Mark Lenhard:We're we're in a massive, huge market. It's huge. You know, by World Bank standards, you might hear uh 800 to a trillion, but when you layer in all the stuff we talked about, we're talking a multiple trillion market. So there will be many successful players, uh, at least a few of us that find success in the space. I think brand is certainly one of them. Absolutely. Uh I think uh ultimately no one wants to put their money with folks they don't trust. We've certainly been in the space for a long time. We've built a lot of trust with our customers uh for good reasons. We protect them, we take care of them. I think a few things there that are also important is we're not saying stable coins is it, right? And that that's the only thing out there. I think there's this beauty in combining fiat plus stable coins and being able to serve any market. Like I said earlier, you can't eat stable coins yet. Maybe at some point you can, but most of our customers can't eat, can't eat with stable coins. And so we want to provide them that opportunity to move in and out whenever they see fit, right? So they can live their lives and maximize the value they're getting from a remittance or from their daily lives and their other earnings. And being able to combine those two together is incredibly difficult. As I said earlier, it just increases the complexity. You've got all of the rails that I talked about in technology, you've got the compliance infrastructure, you've got the treasury infrastructure, which is hard. And do it as many markets as we do is complicated. And so all that has to continue. And even operating a stablecoin-only company is pretty challenging. I mean, I love technology, but and it's great in DeFi, but ultimately, you know, you've got to have the right KYC, the AML, all the compliance and regulatory infrastructure, which we all want, right? Um, because it keeps our society safe. And so all of that we need to, and I know that's being DeFi's away in many cases too. And we'll adopt those opportunities when we can. And the programmatic nature of the of the digital dollar will increase security over time, particularly as new innovations come out. So I'm super excited about all of that. But none of that's easy. And really being able to do that, the key is at scale and at the at the dollar, at the transaction volumes we do, right? We're not moving millions of dollars for each of our customers. We're sometimes moving, you know, tens of dollars. And being able to do that and reconcile and manage all that is uh can be very challenging and doing it safely securely is tough, it's hard, it's complex, um, but it's uh it's good noble work and and serves our serves our customers well.
Raj Parekh:It makes a ton of sense. And it's it presents like a really interesting opportunity where, you know, as you were talking, I'm thinking about like the early stage companies that oftentimes joke like incumbents are not you know innovating fast enough. But I think you guys are like a great example of no an incumbent that's like already here live, like not just you know, to what you were saying earlier, not just like talking about it, but we're actually doing it as well. It's like an interesting, I think, example for like early stage companies to be like, hey, this technology is coming as you know, folks like yourself are validating even further. You guys are gonna be charging fast ahead and operate at the bleeding edge where you guys see possible and where you see fit, while also maintaining the you know, the core 120 plus you know, whatever countries you guys are in today. I think that's like a deadly combination that you guys have a huge advantage on, which is exciting.
Mark Lenhard:I completely agree. And I also I love our startup friends, though, in the ecosystem. I think it's great. Uh I think they we we learn from those guys all the time, as I'm sure they learned from us. I think ultimately we're in such a great, huge market um that is, you know, both very competitive, but also incredibly fruitful for everybody. And we certainly serve a mission that everybody can feel good about. And so ultimately I think there'll be a bunch of winners. It is truly a, you know, rising tide lifts all boats. And so it's super, super excited about the future.
Chuk Okpalugo:Aaron Ross Powell, we we talked a lot about digital dollars. And in these markets, there are the local currencies, and some of them are more volatile than others. How do you think non-US dollar stable coins play a role? And I guess maybe along with that, how will local governments respond to their citizens having this incredible new application that has dollars in it? Those two things kind of go hand in hand. How do you think about those two things?
Mark Lenhard:Aaron Powell Yeah, no, um absolutely. I think the uh I I'm not gonna predict growth of uh of various stable coins around the world. I think we're we're we're gonna see more, right? It'll be very interesting to see what how that evolves, everything all the way down to individual merchant and individual bank stable coins. Um so I think we're gonna see a proliferation of stable coins, as we should over the next few years. Time will tell. There certainly won't be one or two stable coins. There'll be, there will be lots and probably for different use cases. Um it'll be interesting to see. I do think what we find generally is, you know, the reserve currency of the world is is has been, is and has been um the US dollar. I think my personal opinion is stablecoins have kind of reiterated that, if you will. So I think I would find it hard to believe, you know, US dollar stable coins aren't the majority or the large chunk of the market going forward. But um I think there are probably use cases and opportunities for other currency. And we would welcome that on our platform as well. Like we we certainly are agnostic to any and all of those things. Ultimately, we're all about the end user, right? And so if it helps our end user and there's demand for end user, then absolutely we want we want to do that. And I think you'll see, and you're starting to see, which is great, and one of the reasons why I'm bullish, is when a lot of this was outside of the regulatory system, it was hard to get as excited as I am right now about it. And as you've seen it certainly in a lot of our SEN markets, as the regulators have been more open of either formally passed stuff or about to pass things, we're super excited about that and being able to bring stable coins more into that regulated form. So we we welcome that in any any market. And ultimately, I think a lot of our markets, what they care about is ultimately is are there consumers being benefited from it? Um is that currency ultimately being ended up in local currency? And I would say yes to both of those, right? But we welcome the opportunity, and I think you're gonna see it more and more to the point where it will it will fall under some regulation if mo in most, if not all, markets. Particularly, we're seeing an acceleration of folks kind of pick up on that, and that just gets me more excited. The more that happens, I think, the better for all of us.
Chuk Okpalugo:Absolutely right. It every so often I remind myself that we only have stablecoin regulation in very few countries, special asset regulation in very few countries, and uh we have a long way to go still. So it's cliche, uh, and I say this often, but we are still very, very early. Okay, so as we close out the show, uh, we'd like to do some uh quick fire round questions. If we projectile five years from now, what does success look like for Sandwave and World Remit?
Mark Lenhard:Uh Success for Us is a multi-product suite serving, you know, billions of customers all over the world.
Chuk Okpalugo:Awesome. And uh favorite book, movie, uh TV show, or other content that you'd recommend?
Mark Lenhard:You know, I have always been um oh gosh, I'll say this anyway. Uh probably favorite favorite show, uh I really like South Park. Um the reason I like South Park is it puts a very uh very real view on what's going on in the world, which I love I love telling it like it is.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, it it does uh try and mirror to society in a really funny way. Okay. And who else in the space, and I guess either cross-border, fintech, stable coins, who else in the space do you admire that we should bring on the on the show?
Mark Lenhard:Aaron Powell I think you should bring someone on the show. I'm not gonna give you your particular name. I think if you should bring someone on the show who's having, like us, real end user impact on consumers around the world with stable coins. I think it's really important as we build momentum and want to build more energy and acceleration, is the more real use cases we can see, maybe small businesses or consumers. I think the more impact that we can have. Because I'm super excited to see this technology grow and get out there more in the in the real world. And there are lots of examples. And so the more we can highlight them, the better, the better we'll rising tides lift all boats.
Raj Parekh:Absolutely. You've given Chuck and I a challenge here, and we will, we will, we'll do our best to fulfill that. That's awesome.
Chuk Okpalugo:Awesome. Well, that's a wrap. Uh thank you for another great conversation. Where can listeners go to learn more about you or World Remit, Zaps, and Sendwave?
Mark Lenhard:Uh please go go visit one of our sites, sendwave.com or world remit.com. A bunch of information there. And certainly if you've got a need to send money back back home to friends and family, check us out or download us from the app store. Awesome. What about you, Raj?
Raj Parekh:You can find me on X at RajParek underscore and mono.xyz.
Chuk Okpalugo:And for me, it's stablecoinblueprint.com, Chuck Occupygo on LinkedIn, or Chuck underscore XYZ on X. Thank you for joining us, Mark. Thank you guys for having me.
Raj Parekh:Take care.
Chuk Okpalugo:Thanks so much for listening to Money Code. There was so much to take away from today's conversation. I learned a lot, and I hope you did too.
Raj Parekh:If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor, share it with someone you know, or give us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast from. Until next time.
