Avenir Group: Why We Invested in the Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure WasabiCard
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Avenir Group: Why We Invested in the Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure WasabiCard
Avenir Group’s participation in WasabiCard’s strategic financing reflects both its long-term assessment of the value of stablecoin payments and the capital market’s growing confidence in the “stablecoin payment infrastructure” sector.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOver the past several months, landmark developments have emerged consecutively in the stablecoin payments infrastructure sector.
Stripe acquired Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company, to fill critical gaps in its stablecoin settlement and global payments network capabilities; Kraken’s planned acquisition of Hong Kong-based fintech platform Reap further signals that exchanges are expanding into card issuance, embedded finance, and real-world payment networks.
Beneath these acquisitions lies a shared trend: the stablecoin industry is transitioning from “asset issuance and on-chain liquidity competition” to “payments infrastructure competition.”
Over the past decade, the blockchain industry has achieved foundational asset accumulation—from zero to one. As one of its most significant outputs, stablecoins have already built a liquidity base worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet for years, stablecoins have remained largely “on-chain islands”: they flow rapidly between exchanges and on-chain protocols but struggle to seamlessly enter coffee shops, office buildings, cross-border trade orders, and enterprise daily payment scenarios.
This is precisely the core rationale behind Avenir Group’s strategic investment in WasabiCard: the next phase of opportunity for stablecoins lies not in issuing more assets—but in building financial infrastructure that bridges on-chain liquidity with the real-world commercial economy. This assessment stems from Avenir Group’s long-term strategic perspective across digital assets, fintech, and global commercial infrastructure—WasabiCard’s focus on the payments execution layer occupies a pivotal position within this broader ecosystem.
I. From “On-Chain Islands” to “Global Financial Broadband”
Traditional cross-border payment systems remain fundamentally rooted in regionalized banking networks and multi-layered intermediary clearing mechanisms.
Cross-border payment networks like SWIFT primarily serve as messaging conduits among financial institutions. Actual fund clearing still relies on correspondent banking relationships, account networks, and multi-tiered compliance reviews. While this system once supported global trade, it is increasingly revealing efficiency bottlenecks in today’s internet-driven commercial environment.
For global enterprises, pain points in cross-border payments are concrete—not abstract. Settlement times measured in days, high and opaque fees, untraceable fund paths, prohibitively expensive small-value/high-frequency transactions, and complex multi-currency account management—all directly impact operational efficiency and working capital turnover.
Stablecoins present a new possibility for global fund movement. They enable 7×24-hour fund mobility, real-time settlement, global reach, and low-cost transfers. But on-chain liquidity alone is insufficient. What truly determines whether stablecoins can enter mainstream commerce is their ability to be embedded into real-world payment networks—becoming payment tools directly usable by enterprises and consumers.
This means the industry needs not just stablecoins themselves, but an execution-layer infrastructure capable of connecting on-chain assets, global card issuance, merchant networks, fund distribution, and compliance frameworks.
II. The Stablecoin Industry Is Entering the Infrastructure Competition Phase
Over the past few years, core competition in the stablecoin industry centered on the issuance layer. Market attention focused on who commanded larger stablecoin volumes, who built stronger on-chain ecosystems, and who secured broader transactional support. However, as stablecoins gradually enter real-world commerce, industry logic is shifting.
Stablecoins alone cannot automatically solve real-world payment problems. Real-world payments are far more complex than on-chain transfers. They involve card networks, merchant onboarding, payment clearing, cross-border settlement, fund distribution, risk management systems, and varying national regulatory requirements. Stablecoins address how funds move *on-chain*—but what determines their scalable adoption is how those funds enter the real economic cycle.
This explains why infrastructure companies like Bridge and Reap are being revalued. Their value lies not in point solutions, but in their capacity to connect on-chain capital with real-world financial networks. From Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge to Kraken’s push into Reap—and Visa and Mastercard’s continued expansion of stablecoin payment capabilities—the market is coalescing around a consensus: the most enduring long-term value may reside not in individual stablecoin assets, but in the payment networks and infrastructure enabling stablecoins’ entry into real-world commerce.
The stablecoin industry is shifting from “asset competition” to “payment network competition.”
III. From “Can Transfer” to “Can Spend”: Stablecoins Still Lack the Last Mile
Stablecoins have already proven their global mobility—but most of that movement remains confined within the on-chain financial system.
Enterprises and users do not need merely an on-chain transfer tool; they require a payment capability that directly connects to real-world commercial scenarios. Enterprises must execute global procurement, ad spending, software subscriptions, and employee expense management; platforms need to disburse funds globally to users; distributed teams require unified expense oversight across regions; and consumers want to spend online and offline as effortlessly as with traditional debit or credit cards.
A Fireblocks survey cited in its report State of Stablecoins 2025, covering nearly 300 banks, payment institutions, and financial services firms worldwide, found that 49% of respondents are already using stablecoins in live operations, while another 41% are in testing or deployment phases. The report identifies cross-border payments and corporate settlements as among the top application areas for stablecoins adopted by financial institutions.
These demands essentially call for stablecoins to possess “real-world payment capability.”
Yet real-world payment networks have long been dominated by traditional finance. Whether global card issuance, merchant acquiring, consumer payments, or fund clearing—each presents complex infrastructure barriers. Companies capable of bridging stablecoins with real-world payment networks will become the most critical link in stablecoin commercialization. WasabiCard operates precisely at this nexus.
IV. WasabiCard: Connecting Stablecoins to the Real-World Commercial Economy
WasabiCard’s core value extends beyond issuing a card or delivering a payment product—it is building the “payments execution layer” for the stablecoin era.
Focusing on global payments and fund flow use cases,WasabiCard has established an infrastructure system anchored on “global card issuance and payments” and “global fund distribution,” covering key segments including global consumer payments, enterprise expense management, cross-border settlement, fund disbursement, and API-driven financial capabilities.
In global card issuance and payments, WasabiCard offers virtual cards, physical cards, corporate payment cards, and white-label card issuance capabilities—enabling users to deploy stablecoins directly for online and offline consumption worldwide. By integrating with mainstream consumer touchpoints such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, stablecoins evolve from mere on-chain digital assets into fully functional participants in the global merchant network and everyday payment systems.
This capability is especially vital for global enterprises. In practice, many face fragmented cross-border payment challenges—failed ad account deductions, restricted overseas software subscriptions, unstable cross-border procurement payments, and difficulty unifying employee travel and corporate expense management. At their root, these issues reflect traditional payment systems’ poor fit for today’s globalized, internet-native commerce.
By combining stablecoins with global payment networks, WasabiCard delivers more flexible, efficient, and globally integrated payment solutions—allowing enterprises to conduct cross-border payments and manage global funds with lower friction. Simultaneously, on global fund distribution, WasabiCard further addresses inefficiencies in cross-border fund flows.
Whether cross-border remittances, corporate payroll, alliance commission payouts, or platform-to-user settlements, traditional systems often suffer from long settlement times, high processing fees, low efficiency for small-value payments, and regionally complex settlement procedures. Leveraging stablecoins’ real-time settlement and on-chain fund mobility, WasabiCard helps enterprises build more efficient global fund distribution systems—shifting cross-border fund movement from legacy “day-based” processing logic toward a more real-time, internet-native financial network.
From this perspective, WasabiCard is constructing not merely a payment tool—but an indispensable underlying channel for stablecoins entering the real-world commercial economy.
V. WasabiCard’s Infrastructure Value: Payments, Distribution, and Compliance
The value of infrastructure companies lies not only in technical sophistication, but more importantly, in the depth with which they solve real-world problems.
First, WasabiCard solves global payment access. For companies expanding overseas, Web3 platforms, digital service providers, and globally distributed teams, payment failures, fragmented accounts, and complex fee management are not edge cases—they are core growth constraints. WasabiCard enhances payment reachability and stability through its global card issuance and payment network capabilities.
Second, WasabiCard solves global fund distribution. Amid increasingly fragmented global commercial collaboration, enterprises need to pay users across countries, currencies, and account systems. Traditional banking systems incur high costs for small-value, high-frequency, cross-regional payments—while stablecoins are inherently suited to such fund flows.
More critically, payment infrastructure must ultimately rest on compliance and risk management. Trust forms the bedrock of payments—and trust derives from compliance capabilities, risk control systems, and sustained operational reliability. WasabiCard continuously invests in KYC, KYB, AML, and on-chain/off-chain risk identification, while proactively pursuing regulatory licenses in relevant operating jurisdictions.
Notably, compliance is not a one-time build—it is a dynamic process evolving alongside business expansion. Different legal jurisdictions impose distinct regulatory requirements on stablecoin payments, cross-border fund flows, and card issuance. Maintaining synchronized evolution between compliance frameworks and regulatory expectations during global business expansion is both an industry baseline and a core concern for Avenir Group as an investor.
This is also a key reason Avenir Group focuses on WasabiCard: long-term competition in stablecoin payments hinges not solely on product speed, but on balancing globalization, compliance, and scale.
VI. Why Avenir Group Backs WasabiCard
Avenir Group’s strategic investment in WasabiCard reflects its judgment on the long-term trajectory of stablecoin payments.
In Avenir Group’s view, stablecoins’ true value lies not merely in growing on-chain transaction volume—but in their potential to become a new type of payment network for the global internet economy. Crucially, what matters most in this evolution is not any single payment product, but infrastructure capable of simultaneously connecting on-chain capital, global payment networks, and real-world commercial scenarios.
Jacob Zhong, Managing Partner of Strategic Investments & Partnership Management at Avenir Group, stated: “Avenir Group consistently monitors the convergence of stablecoins, payment infrastructure, and digital finance. We believe that as stablecoin use cases expand, their functionality is progressively extending beyond on-chain value storage and transfer into broader payment, settlement, and fund flow applications.” He added: “The future evolution of payment infrastructure may manifest more prominently as interconnectivity across global fund networks, enhanced real-time settlement capabilities, and programmable payment functions. WasabiCard’s focus on the payments execution layer represents one of our most closely watched and researched domains.”
For Avenir Group, WasabiCard’s value lies not only in its product capabilities—but in its strategic positioning: it bridges stablecoin liquidity, global payment networks, real enterprise needs, and compliant financial systems.
As stablecoins gradually enter mainstream commercial systems, future industry competitiveness will stem from global payment accessibility, fund flow efficiency, and coverage of real-world consumption scenarios. These capabilities constitute among the most critical infrastructure entry points in the stablecoin era.
VII. Investment Rationale: Why Now?
Avenir Group chose this moment to participate in WasabiCard’s strategic investment because stablecoin payments are entering a pivotal infrastructure window.
In Avenir Group’s view, three major developments are concurrently unfolding in the stablecoin industry: (1) global stablecoin payment networks are rapidly forming; (2) USD-pegged stablecoins are gradually entering mainstream finance; and (3) global internet commerce is accelerating upgrades to payment infrastructure.
These three converging trends are collectively propelling stablecoin payments into genuine large-scale commercialization.
Global Stablecoin Payment Networks Are Rapidly Forming
Over the past decade, the crypto industry has evolved from a niche technical experiment into a novel financial network with a global user base.
According to Triple-A’s Crypto Ownership Report 2024, as of 2024, global cryptocurrency holders reached approximately 562 million—about 6.8% of the world’s population—up roughly 34% year-on-year from 420 million in 2023.
Simultaneously, stablecoins are becoming the core payment medium within this network. A Bloomberg report notes that stablecoin transaction volume hit $33 trillion in 2025—a 72% year-on-year increase—with over 230 million global stablecoin holder addresses.
More importantly, stablecoin use cases are expanding beyond on-chain trading into cross-border payments, corporate settlements, global fund distribution, and internet commerce payment networks. Fireblocks’ research shows that 49% of financial institutions already use stablecoins operationally for payments, while another 41% are in testing or deployment. This signals that stablecoins are no longer internal crypto-market assets—but evolving into a new type of payment network for the global internet economy.
USD Stablecoins Are Becoming the Digital Extension of the Dollar System
A key shift in the stablecoin industry is the increasing allocation of USD stablecoin reserves into highly liquid U.S. dollar assets—particularly U.S. Treasury securities—deepening their linkage with the U.S. Treasury market.
Historically, stablecoins were viewed as “on-chain mirrors of the U.S. dollar.” But with regulatory frameworks maturing, stablecoins are assuming new financial roles. Mainstream stablecoins—including USDC and USDT—are allocating an ever-larger share of their reserves to short-term U.S. Treasuries.
Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Department initiatives and frameworks like the GENIUS Act are steering payment-oriented stablecoins toward “highly liquid dollar asset reserves.” This signifies that stablecoins are no longer merely crypto assets—they are gradually becoming the digital extension of the U.S. dollar financial system across the global internet.
As Reuters reported, stablecoin issuers have become significant new buyers in the U.S. short-term Treasury market, with projections suggesting stablecoins could generate hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasury demand over the coming years. Long term, stablecoins’ significance extends beyond “on-chain dollars”—they represent a new type of clearing medium for the future global digital financial system.
Traditional Payment Systems Can No Longer Meet Global Internet Commerce Needs
Meanwhile, global commerce itself is transforming. The rapid growth of AI, SaaS, cross-border e-commerce, globally distributed teams, digital service platforms, and Web3 networks has made commercial collaboration inherently global. Yet traditional payment systems remain anchored in regionalized bank accounts and local clearing networks.
This structural misalignment is increasingly rendering traditional payment systems inadequate for next-generation internet commerce.
Examples include: cross-border settlement cycles still measured in days; correspondent banking layers causing high and opaque fees; excessive costs for small-value/high-frequency payments; complex multi-currency account management; inefficient cross-border payroll and fund disbursement for enterprises; and unstable payment success rates for internet-native use cases like ad placements, software subscriptions, and global procurement.
Stablecoins, however, offer the first real opportunity to make global fund networks “internet-native.” Funds can now flow in near real time—like information—with lower cost, higher efficiency, and greater global reach.
What’s truly needed behind this shift is a new generation of stablecoin-era payment infrastructure.
Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure Is on the Cusp of Takeoff
When stablecoin volumes continue rising, real enterprise usage emerges, and both traditional finance and crypto platforms intensify investments in payment networks—the industry bottleneck shifts from “Do stablecoins exist?” to “Can stablecoins be used efficiently?”
This is precisely where payment infrastructure companies find their opportunity.
From an industry lifecycle perspective, stablecoin payments today resemble the early internet’s transition from connecting information to enabling commerce. Only when the underlying network becomes sufficiently robust can large-scale application-layer breakthroughs truly occur. WasabiCard is laying precisely this foundational financial conduit for stablecoin mass commercialization.
From a team capability standpoint, WasabiCard possesses combined expertise in payment engineering, native Web3 understanding, and global business expansion. Stablecoin payments are neither purely crypto products nor simple migrations of traditional financial products—they demand teams fluent in on-chain assets, payment clearing, compliance/risk management, and enterprise-grade services. WasabiCard’s composite capabilities provide a solid foundation for sustained expansion in this sector.
From an ecosystem value perspective, WasabiCard’s products extend beyond single-user scenarios to serve Web3 enterprises, cross-border platforms, digital service providers, globally distributed teams, and fintech ecosystem partners. Such foundational capabilities offer strong scalability—positioning WasabiCard to become a critical node within the stablecoin payment network.
Notable Industry Challenges
While maintaining optimism about industry opportunities, the stablecoin payment infrastructure sector faces several tangible challenges requiring objective scrutiny.
Regulatory landscape: Regulatory frameworks governing stablecoin payments, cross-border fund flows, and embedded finance remain under development across major markets. Significant disparities exist in compliance requirements and policy implementation timelines across jurisdictions. Industry participants should avoid extrapolating localized regulatory progress as global tailwinds—and instead maintain close monitoring of regional policy developments.
Technology and security: Deep integration of on-chain and off-chain systems introduces complex security risk management demands—including smart contract security, key management, and fraud risk controls—all requiring sustained investment.
Competitive landscape: Traditional payment giants and multiple Web3-native firms are simultaneously expanding their presence—industry structure remains unsettled.
Facing these challenges, long-term competitive moats will be built upon comprehensive capabilities—compliance depth, technical stability, and global network coverage—not short-term functional advantages of any single product.
Conclusion: A New Cycle of Stablecoin Payments Has Just Begun
Whether Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge or Kraken’s acquisition of Reap, both reflect a fundamental industry shift. Global financial institutions, payment giants, and crypto platforms are increasingly recognizing that future competition centers not on transaction volume or asset scale—but on who can build a complete global financial infrastructure network.
From payments and card issuance to stablecoin settlement and global fund flows, the industry is entering a new infrastructure competition phase. As stablecoins gradually migrate from the Web3 world into global commerce, a new global payment network cycle is emerging.
Avenir Group’s participation in WasabiCard’s strategic financing reflects both its conviction in the long-term value of stablecoin payments—and capital market confidence in the “stablecoin payment infrastructure” direction. Ultimately, stablecoin payments may transform not just how we pay—but the underlying logic of global fund movement.
Disclosure and Disclaimer
This article is published in connection with Avenir Group’s strategic investment in WasabiCard. Readers should be aware of the aforementioned material relationship between Avenir Group and WasabiCard.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any legal, tax, investment, or other professional advice or recommendations provided by Avenir Group. Avenir Group makes no express or implied representations, warranties, or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content herein. For the latest information, please contact WasabiCard (support@wasabidesk.com).
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