From Visa's vaults to stablecoin infrastructure
Raj's entry into crypto came through the back door — the security door. His first years at Visa were spent helping banks understand breaches, exploits, and hacks. But the intersection of that work with open-source payment systems pulled him down the crypto rabbit hole, eventually leading him to run crypto products at Visa and launch Stablecoin Settlement: an overhaul of Visa's treasury systems to move money between issuing and acquiring banks via stablecoin.
"There was very little stablecoin infrastructure in the space. If you were a fintech, PSP or large organisation that wanted to dabble in stablecoins, it just wasn't there."
— Raj Parekh
That gap became the founding thesis for Portal, a stablecoin developer platform serving organisations from WorldRemit and PayPal to earlier-stage companies building what Raj cheerfully calls "boring use cases" — freelance platforms, neobanks, cross-border remittance tools. Six months ago, Portal was acquired by the Monad Foundation, where Raj now leads the broader payments ecosystem.
WalletConnect Pay x Monad: a Visa analogy that actually works
On the recently announced integration between WalletConnect Pay and Monad, Raj reaches for a framework he knows well: the two-layer structure underpinning Visa's entire network — authorisation messaging first, settlement after.
"I think of WalletConnect and Monad as fitting those two pieces together for the payment space with stablecoins — WalletConnect is the messaging layer, Monad is the settlement layer."
— Raj Parekh
It is a clean framing that positions the integration not as a crypto-native experiment but as a structured parallel to how the most battle-tested payment network in the world already works.
A trillion-dollar call
On where stablecoins are headed over the next three years, Raj is direct. The current circulating supply sits around $300 billion. He expects that to cross the trillion-dollar mark — and is prepared to be surprised if it does not.
"It's no longer a few crypto-native folks enabling this. It's your largest fintechs and banks now exploring and building in the stablecoin space. If we're not past a trillion, I'd be really surprised."
— Raj Parekh
Beyond the headline number, he sees stablecoin issuance proliferating like an app store: many different programmes, many different purposes. At the same time, he expects Tether and USDC to hold their network effects and continue growing — the rising tide lifting all boats.
Merchants don't need to know what's under the hood
Asked about the case for merchants, Raj comes back to a principle of good payment design: abstraction. A merchant accepting a Visa transaction has no visibility into what's happening beneath the surface. They see an approval. They receive their funds. That is all they need.
"A merchant may not know that it's actually a stablecoin transaction happening underneath the hood. All they know is that they've been paid. That's how payment systems should ultimately be designed."
— Raj Parekh
The practical benefits are real: lower fees, faster settlement, and a path away from the card transaction costs that regularly push smaller businesses toward cash-only policies.
Money at internet speed
For consumers, Raj identifies two distinct advantages. First: the ability to live and spend in stablecoins without the unnecessary step of converting back to fiat. For anyone paid in stablecoins or holding dollars outside the US banking system, being forced to off-ramp before buying a coffee is arbitrary friction.
Second — and he frames this as genuinely new — earning risk-free interest anywhere in the world.
"If you're able to be anywhere from Asia to LatAm and still earn Fed funds rates in terms of interest — that's a pretty powerful new financial tool and utility that we've never seen."
— Raj Parekh
And then the principle that unifies both: "We can send a text, an email, stream a podcast through the internet. But before stablecoins and crypto, we really couldn't move money at that same level and speed. Moving money at internet speed — that's the benefit."
Crypto cards vs. WalletConnect Pay: both have a role
Raj is balanced on the debate between stablecoin-linked cards and direct wallet payments. Cards solve a real problem today — they make stablecoins spendable everywhere Visa and Mastercard are accepted without requiring any merchant infrastructure changes. The interchange economics also create room for rewards that make them sticky.
But the overhead is significant: Visa approval, market restrictions, fraud complexity, and fiat settlement rather than native stablecoin.
"WalletConnect Pay? That's as simple as it gets. Funds from your wallet to the merchant. Probably instant. If you want really instant money as a merchant, that's the best way of doing it. If you want to pay less fees — that's also the best way of doing it."
— Raj Parekh
His conclusion: both modalities will coexist and grow. Cards meet users where they are today. WalletConnect Pay points toward where the infrastructure is headed.
What's next for Monad: performance, privacy, and a payment network
Monad is positioning itself as a high-performance open-source L1 EVM blockchain with sub-second finality — removing the throughput bottlenecks that have historically constrained Ethereum. But the roadmap has a more specific ambition.
"We're really focused on how do we take Monad and turn it into a payment network — and how do we make it private. Public blockchains today have a main fault in that every transaction is visible. We're excited about pushing the boundary of privacy on-chain."
— Raj Parekh
For payments to reach mainstream adoption, default on-chain transparency creates real friction for institutions and consumers alike. Monad is actively exploring how to solve it, a direction Dayana noted aligns with privacy being named the defining theme of 2026.