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Simon Taylor Profile picture
@sytaylor
Jul 22, 2025 • 3 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Western Union is

- A $4.2bn revenue business
- Revenue down 3.2% YoY
- $150bn annual volume

Meanwhile Visa estimates "Retail-sized stablecoin transactions"

- $4.8bn monthly volume
- $57.6bn annualized
- Growing 1x to 4x YoY (if not much higher)
At 2.6bn Market Cap Western Union trades below its top line revenue ($4.2bn)

Contrast this with Circle trading at $48bn market cap - trading at 20x+ revenue, and 70x+ earnings

Clearly, CRCL is crowded, and there's hype.

But can the incumbent get innovation before the innovator gets distribution?
Excited to chat more about this on @TokenizedPod this coming week

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More from @sytaylor

Simon Taylor Profile picture
Jun 14
Major narrative violation: The big banks ARE doing stablecoins.

@Zelle says it is expanding to India and will launch a stablecoin later this year.Image
For context: Zelle is the largest P2P money transfer service in the United States, larger than Venmo or Cash App, and built by the large banks.

The parent company Early Warning is owned by seven banks: BofA, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
They're launching the app in India but NOT the stablecoin.

This makes sense as India represents the largest outflow of remittances from the US, flowing there.

India is, however, not particularly fond of crypto, so I'm not surprised to see Zelle being more cautious about naming the stablecoin for that corridor.
Read 5 tweets
Simon Taylor Profile picture
Feb 19
Modern Treasury just became a PSP competing with Stripe and Adyen.

But that undersells it massively.

What they really did was rethink what a PSP needs to be in 2026.

👇 Image
Most PSPs start with one core rail like cards

Then add others like wires or ACH or stablecoins on a platform build around cards.

Modern Treasury started with all rails.

Creating one unified API for

- ACH,
- wires,
- RTP, FedNow,
- cards,
- and stablecoins.

Where you route the money is just a configuration decision.
That changes:

→ The architecture
→ The customer experience
→ The complex funds flows you can build

Same API. Same ledger.
Read 7 tweets
Simon Taylor Profile picture
Jan 2
The @kontigo_app vs Checkbook & JP Morgan drama is pure 🍿.

I wanted to give it some context. Because the claim of "banking system is evil and outdated" is simply wrong and lacks context.

Here's what I think is really going on
JP Morgan closed accounts for crypto startups Kontigo and Blindpay

The information reported that the account freezes were linked to business activity in high-risk regions, including Venezuela, and to gaps in customer identity checks.

From Tradeweb: “JPMorgan acted after seeing rising disputed transactions and chargebacks tied to these accounts. The bank said the decision was based on risk controls, not opposition to stablecoins themselves.”
To understand this, there are a few things we need to unpack:

🧠 There are three players here. Checkbook, JP Morgan, and the start-ups themselves.

- JPM banks Checkbook.
- Checkbook "banks" Kontigo.
- Kontigo serves the End User.
Read 13 tweets
Simon Taylor Profile picture
Dec 23, 2025
🚨 JUST IN: @Shift4 just launched stablecoin settlement for hundreds of thousands of merchants.

Merchants can get paid in USDC, USDT, EURC, or DAI 24/7

Instead of waiting for bank transfers - OR paying a fee (like 1%) for an advance.

Here's why it matters 🧵 Image
Shift 4 is a major PSP.

- They process billions of transactions a year.
- $200B+ in payment volume.
- Segments like restaurants, hotels, stadiums, retail.

Not all of those merchants are familiar with stablecoins.

But the ability to get paid faster will make many of them curious.

And that expands the TAM of stablecoins.
Why stablecoins for merchant settlement?

Right now, if you're a merchant and you want your money faster than the standard 2-3 day window, you pay for it.

Square charges 1-1.5% for instant payouts.

PayPal has similar fees.

Everyone does.

Stablecoins settle in seconds. Around the clock. Weekends and holidays included.
Read 6 tweets
Simon Taylor Profile picture
Dec 21, 2025
The State of Fintech 2026:

Nubank: 127m customers
Klarna: 114m
Revolut: 65m

A handful of companies now have more users than most countries have people.

We've entered the Age of the Fintech Hyperscaler.

🧵 What I learned writing the annual report with @jevgenijs Image
AI assisted 1 in 6 purchases this Black Friday.

It showed in the data for the first time.

But here's the uncomfortable truth:

Almost no fintech has an industry-specific foundation model driving earnings.

Stripe is the only example I found.

The rest is still vibes.Image
Image
Stablecoins found product-market fit.

Not as "bank killers."

As cross-border rails and corporate treasury tools.

The use case that won: payouts and pay-ins for businesses tired of correspondent banking.

Boring? Yes. Working? Also yes. Image
Read 10 tweets
Simon Taylor Profile picture
Nov 21, 2025
Huge moment for Agentic Commerce.

EMVCo (the technical body behind Visa, Mastercard, Amex) is creating global standards for "agentic payments."

This is the biggest change in card payments since "tap to pay"

Here's how it works 🧵 Image
Right now, AI agents are phenomenal at finding things to buy.

- Power users are starting to default to their research
- Can compare complex options and summarize
- And when people click through conversion is 2x to 5x higher

But...
There's no agreed way for payment to happen

- There's countless protocols
- x402 for agents accessing other tools
- ACP and A2P from Open AI and Google
- Visa and Mastercard have their own approaches
Read 11 tweets

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