Hey, fintech fam 💜

At Fintech Is Femme HQ, we have a saying now: low cortisol maxing. It basically means finding self-care in between the bolts of grinding — and honestly, it's become easier to do now that sunshine is finally part of this season of building.

We've been hard at work rolling out everything from our recent events, and the Humans of Fintech podcast lineup is stacked. A special episode recorded live at FIS Emerald — featuring an exclusive interview with Stephanie Ferris, CEO of FIS — drops June 2. And we have another episode dropping next Thursday, which I think you're really going to love.

More on that at the end of today's newsletter.

In the meantime, I've been watching something unfold across the industry that I think deserves a closer look — three stories that on the surface look separate but are actually telling the same story.

Stablecoins are going mainstream. Global business infrastructure is finally catching up to how companies actually operate. And the financial system is being rebuilt in real time for the people it was always supposed to serve.

That's what we're getting into today.

Let's go. ✨

#TRENDING

Every Thursday, I break down the fintech stories that matter most — grounded in my reporting, interviews with industry leaders, and what I’m seeing unfold across the industry.

SoFi has rolled out its dollar-backed stablecoin, SoFiUSD, to users of its banking app, becoming the first U.S. national bank to offer a stablecoin directly to retail customers on a public blockchain.

The company announced Wednesday that nearly 15 million members will be able to buy, sell, hold, and convert SoFiUSD within the SoFi app. The stablecoin is available on Ethereum and Solana and is redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars through SoFi Bank. SoFi plans to add tokenized deposits — which would be FDIC-insured and interest-bearing — and cross-border transfer capabilities in the coming weeks.

That last piece is the one I keep coming back to.

The ability for SoFi members to move value across borders 24/7/365, with fewer delays and lower costs than legacy financial systems, is the whole point. It's what blockchain was actually designed to do — give people, especially consumers and small businesses, faster, cheaper, more direct access to financial infrastructure that was never built with them in mind.

Blockchain was originally designed as a peer-to-peer system to move value without intermediaries — faster, cheaper, and borderless. The whole premise was giving people direct access to financial infrastructure without needing a bank in the middle.

The fact that a national bank is now the one deploying it isn't a departure from that vision. It's just the version of it that actually reaches everyone.

Here's what I've believed (and reported on) for a while: crypto and fintech cannot build the future of financial services in isolation from each other. They have to integrate — not coexist, not compete, but actually build together. The rails, the access, the speed that blockchain promised only becomes real when it's embedded inside the platforms people already trust with their money. 

Stablecoins are the bridge — blockchain-native assets pegged to real-world currency, usable for everyday financial transactions without the volatility that made crypto impractical for most people. SoFiUSD is a blockchain doing exactly what it was designed to do. Just with a bank's trust and regulatory framework underneath it.

That's what SoFi just did.

And it matters that it's a bank doing it. When I spoke with Kelli Keough, EVP at SoFi, earlier this year, she made a point that connects directly to this announcement. 

"60% of people surveyed said they would prefer to trade crypto at a bank than a non-bank," she told me. "There's some security that comes from the banking institution." 

SoFiUSD is that thesis made into a product — bank-grade trust, blockchain-grade speed, inside the app people already use to save, borrow, and invest.

Keough also talked about how SoFi's regulatory advantage enables innovation rather than limits it. Getting its national bank charter wasn't just a compliance milestone — it was what made a move like this possible. A pure-play fintech without that charter couldn't issue a bank-grade stablecoin. SoFi can. And now it has.

The broader signal here is about where blockchain is actually going. Not toward speculation. Not toward a parallel financial system. Toward integration — becoming the infrastructure layer that makes existing financial services faster, more global, and more accessible. SoFiUSD is one of the clearest examples yet of that integration becoming real for everyday consumers.

It is also not happening in isolation. More on that in story three.

Why it matters: The first national bank to put a stablecoin directly into consumers' hands is a major financial-access story. Cross-border mobility, 24/7 transfers, lower costs — these are the things legacy rails were never designed to deliver at the consumer level. Blockchain was. SoFi just connected those two worlds in a way that nearly 15 million people can actually use.

Airwallex launched Billing this week — invoicing, subscription management, and usage-based billing on a single global infrastructure. It is a calculated push into one of fintech's most crowded races — and a bet that whoever built the global infrastructure first will be the hardest to beat.

"The companies that will win the next decade are operating globally from day one," said Jack Zhang, Airwallex co-founder and CEO, in a statement. "They'll sell to a developer in Singapore on Monday and invoice an enterprise in Frankfurt on Tuesday."

The past ten years have been full of changes in global business. New development goals, rapid technological innovation, and accelerating globalization are reshaping how countries do business with each other at a speed that legacy infrastructure was never designed to handle. Companies across Asia are becoming global leaders in sectors like AI and climate tech, driving massive economic growth across the region, according to the World Economic Forum.

When I sat down with Ida Liu, CEO of HSBC Private Bank, during the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit, she made the same point from the wealth side: 60% of global wealth creation is now being driven by entrepreneurs, and the fastest growth is coming from Asia and India.

The customer Jack Zhang is building for isn't a niche. It's the direction the entire global economy is moving. What hasn't kept pace is the infrastructure built to serve them.

Most billing tools were designed for businesses that started domestically and later expanded. Which means global capability was added incrementally — different systems for different markets, manual reconciliation across currencies, and tax handling that requires workarounds in every new jurisdiction. It works until it doesn't, and for companies scaling across multiple markets simultaneously, it tends to stop working faster than expected.

The usage-based billing piece is where it gets more interesting. AI-native companies are increasingly charging per token, per API call, per outcome — pricing models that shift in real time based on how customers actually use a product. Most legacy billing infrastructure wasn't built to natively meter that kind of usage. Companies end up building custom solutions on top of whatever tool they started with, which creates technical debt that compounds as they scale.

Airwallex is making the case that the cleaner answer is infrastructure that was built globally and usage-native from the start — not adapted to it after the fact.

The infrastructure underneath it is what makes that argument credible. Airwallex has 85+ regulatory licenses across 40+ markets, like-for-like settlement in 20+ currencies, 160+ global payment methods, and account-to-account rails that protect margins by up to 3% compared to card-based B2B flows, according to a company spokesperson. 

That's a decade of regulatory and infrastructure work that's genuinely hard to replicate quickly.

The company's numbers reflect that momentum. $1.3 billion ARR. 70%+ year-over-year growth. $8 billion valuation. Cash-flow positive. 250,000+ businesses globally, including 46,000+ in the U.S. — a market Airwallex is now pushing into aggressively after building its foundation across Asia, Australia, and Europe.

That U.S. push is worth watching. Airwallex has been deliberate about who it goes after here. Zhang has been clear: if you're a U.S. company operating only domestically, there are better tools for you. But if you're selling across markets, managing multiple entities, and need banking, payments, spend, and billing on one platform — that's Airwallex's lane.

It's a smart way to enter a crowded market, and the competition is real — Mercury, Brex, Ramp, Stripe, and Revolut are all circling the same set of global business customers. What's heating up isn't any single rivalry. It's a broader race to become the financial operating system for companies that don't think in borders.

Why it matters: The next generation of businesses — especially AI-native companies moving to usage-based pricing — needs billing infrastructure built for how they actually operate, not retrofitted from a domestic-first model. Airwallex Billing is a direct answer to that gap. And as more players compete for the global business customer, the companies with the deepest regulatory and infrastructure moat will have the advantage that's hardest to copy. That's the fintech giant race worth watching.

I covered Bitcoin's meteoric rise as a wealth management reporter. I watched the hype build, the winter hit, and the wreckage follow. When stablecoins started coming up in conversations, my instinct was cautious at best. Nice rebrand. We'll see.

And then I sat down with Sophie Sakellariadis, a decade-long Stripe leader who now builds the money movement systems behind how businesses store value, move funds, and operate across borders — including stablecoins. And something shifted.

Sakellariadis has a story about an entrepreneur. She runs a graphic design shop in Ghana — one of the top ones for startups in West Africa, serving clients across the US. She's brilliant at her job. And yet she spent months trying to open a US dollar bank account just to receive payments. Wires from clients disappear into the banking ether for 15 days. Her office lease required two years of rent, upfront, in cash. So she built an office in her mom's backyard instead.

"Imagine all the time and brain power she put towards that," Sakellariadis told me, "instead of putting towards building the business."

That story is why stablecoins matter. Not because they're a better version of crypto. Because they're the first technology Sakellariadis has seen in her decade at Stripe that creates a real path forward for entrepreneurs like that — anywhere in the world — to store funds in digital dollars, receive payments instantly, move money across borders without getting destroyed on FX fees, and access their cash 24/7/365 without waiting for a bank that's closed on holidays or a wire that may never arrive.

"Stable coins equal crypto is the myth I wish would permanently retire," she told me on the Humans of Fintech podcast. And she's right. The underlying technology is blockchain. But the delta between an asset that could drop 50% overnight and one that's pegged to the dollar — and spendable anywhere — is enormous.

On Stripe today, businesses in 150 countries can create an account, hold funds in USDC, access local account details, get a virtual card, and send money to anyone. Felix, one of the companies building on Stripe's Bridge infrastructure, already handles 10% of the $60 billion in annual US-to-Mexico remittances — in stablecoins.

SoFi just put a bank-issued stablecoin in 15 million American hands. Airwallex is building the global billing infrastructure for businesses that were born operating across borders. And Stripe is laying the rails underneath entrepreneurs everywhere — from Peru to Ghana to Singapore — who never had infrastructure that actually worked for them.

Three different companies. Three different approaches. The same fundamental bet: the financial system is being rebuilt. And this time, it's being built for everyone.

🎙 I went deep on all of this with Sophie on Humans of Fintech. Listen to the full episode here.

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Let’s keep you booked and busy. Every Thursday, I share fintech events worth adding to your calendar— both IRL and online.

After the energy of FTW: NYC, we’re officially headed west.

FTW: SF is coming September 29 - October 1, and we’re already deep in planning mode.

If NYC showed us anything, it’s that the fintech industry is craving real community again — not just panels and pitch stages, but actual conversations between operators, builders, banks, fintechs, and infrastructure leaders shaping what comes next.

Grab your early bird passes now…

One of my favorite parts of building Fintech Is Femme has been watching The Academy of Fintech community grow into such an incredible network of operators, founders, executives, and emerging leaders across the industry.

What makes this community special is the people inside it.

Leaders from J.P. Morgan, Amex, Prove, and many more are already part of the network — sharing ideas, making introductions, supporting each other, and helping shape the future of fintech together.

Inside The Academy, members get:
• semi-monthly virtual events
• curated networking opportunities
• direct access to me and the Fintech Is Femme team
• leadership conversations with top operators across fintech
• and a trusted community of people genuinely invested in helping each other grow

If that sounds like your kind of fintech community, we’d love to have you.

Pure fun.

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That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo.

See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜