In an exclusive interview with The Coin Headlines, Rahul Sahni, Chief Business Officer, and Chief Operating Officer, TransFi, shared his thoughts on the major bottlenecks facing stablecoin adoption in 2026. One of the most successful use-cases of blockchain technology, stablecoins have taken the international payments scene by storm, with major players like Tether and Circle commanding the lion’s share.
In this candid conversation, Sahni highlights the most significant operational failure points stablecoins are addressing, regulatory questions surrounding stablecoin settlement, emerging markets’ central banks’ reluctance toward USD-pegged stablecoins, and more. The interview follows below.
TransFi operates across 70+ countries and 250+ local payment methods – at that scale, what is the single biggest operational failure point that stablecoin settlement actually fixes, and where does it still fall short?
The biggest operational failure point is the gap between moving money and making it usable. At this scale, funds may move quickly across borders, but working capital can still remain trapped if liquidity is unavailable at the destination or the payment cannot be converted and paid out predictably in local currency.
Stablecoin settlement helps by reducing dependence on intermediary banks, shortening settlement times and making costs more transparent. But it does not solve the last mile. Without dependable local liquidity, regulated fiat conversion, local payment integrations and compliance infrastructure, faster on-chain settlement does not automatically translate into a completed supplier payment, payroll run or customer payout.
What does a stablecoin-powered vendor payment actually look like end-to-end for an enterprise treasury team that has never touched crypto infrastructure before?
For the treasury team, it should look much like a normal vendor payment. The company submits an approved invoice or payment instruction through a dashboard, API or existing treasury system, funds the payment in fiat, and provides the vendor’s preferred currency and bank or wallet details.
Behind the scenes, the payment provider completes the compliance checks, converts the funds into a stablecoin such as USDC or USDT, settles the value over a blockchain network, and converts it into local currency at the destination. The vendor receives the payment through a familiar local bank transfer, digital wallet or regional payment method. They do not need to know that a stablecoin was used in the middle.
The enterprise does not need to hold stablecoins or manage crypto wallets. What changes is the settlement layer between the two fiat endpoints. Treasury still needs a clear FX quote, payment status, compliance record and reconciliation data. The stablecoin should be invisible infrastructure, rather than a new operational burden for the finance team.
What is the question regulators keep asking about stablecoin settlement that the industry still does not have a clean answer for?
The question regulators keep returning to is who is legally accountable for the payment from end to end? A stablecoin payment can involve an issuer, wallet provider, blockchain network, liquidity provider, off-ramp and local bank across several jurisdictions. If sanctions screening fails, the stablecoin loses its peg, local conversion breaks down or the recipient never receives the funds, there is still no universally accepted answer on which party owns the loss and provides recourse. At TransFi, our operating response is to apply consistent AML and financial-crime standards across markets and work with licensed local partners. But the wider industry can prove that a transaction was completed on-chain more easily than it can provide one clear line of legal responsibility from sender to recipient.
MiCA and the CLARITY Act are moving in different directions on stablecoin standards – does regulatory fragmentation make your job harder or does it create a competitive advantage for infrastructure players who can navigate it?
Regulatory fragmentation makes execution harder, but it also creates a competitive advantage for infrastructure providers that can absorb that difficulty on behalf of the customer. A payment cannot simply be compliant in one jurisdiction and then operate everywhere. Each market may have different rules governing which stablecoins can be used, how funds are safeguarded, which entity can perform the conversion and how the final fiat payout is completed.
That adds licensing, integration and compliance costs. The advantage is not regulatory arbitrage. It is regulatory abstraction. Infrastructure providers should translate those different requirements into one consistent payment flow, using regulated stablecoins and licensed local partners behind the scenes. The enterprise should not have to rebuild its treasury process every time it enters a new market.
USDT and USDC dominate stablecoin settlement globally – does currency matter to your enterprise clients, or is speed and reliability the only variable they actually care about?
Enterprise clients care about speed, reliability and receiving the correct amount in the required local currency. The stablecoin itself should remain invisible to them.
Behind the scenes, however, the choice matters. Treasury teams must consider liquidity, regulatory acceptance, FX availability, counterparty risk, settlement speed, cost and local payout reliability. USDT may offer deeper liquidity in some emerging-market corridors, while USDC may better meet an institution’s compliance and transparency requirements.
The infrastructure provider’s role is to assess the full payment route and select the most compliant, liquid and reliable option for each transaction, rather than requiring enterprises to choose one stablecoin globally.
Emerging market central banks are increasingly hostile to dollar-denominated stablecoins – how does that political reality affect how you build corridors in those regions?
It means we cannot build every corridor as a simple USDT or USDC route. Central banks are understandably concerned about capital flight, deposit substitution and losing control over how dollars move through the domestic economy.
Our approach is to use stablecoins primarily as a cross-border settlement rail, rather than introduce a parallel dollar economy. The sender may fund in fiat, the stablecoin moves value between regulated entities, and the recipient is paid through a local bank account, wallet or payment method in local currency.
That requires each corridor to be built around local foreign-exchange rules, transaction limits, reporting requirements, liquidity and licensed partners. In some markets, the right solution may eventually involve a regulated local-currency stablecoin or tokenised deposit rather than a dollar stablecoin.
The political reality makes corridor expansion slower, but it also reinforces TransFi’s role. The value is making that settlement compatible with the local monetary and regulatory system.
Which emerging market corridor surprised you most in terms of genuine enterprise demand for stablecoin settlement – and which one looked promising but did not deliver?
We were surprised by how quickly stablecoin adoption accelerated across Southeast Asia. When we started four years ago, stablecoins were still at a very early stage. Since then, adoption has grown far faster than we expected, and our business has expanded significantly across the region as a result.
At the same time, markets such as Australia and New Zealand have been harder to crack. We initially assumed that stablecoin adoption would be stronger in developed economies, similar to the US and Europe, but that has not yet been the case for us.
As TransFi continues to scale, our focus is on strengthening our presence across Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and the US, where we see the strongest opportunities for growth.
