In this episode of Payments Pulse, host Dayana Aleksandrova sits down with Jelena Noble, the founder of Noble, a stablecoin infrastructure company at the forefront of building the rails that could redefine how money moves across the internet.
Jelena brings a sharp, infrastructure-first lens to the payments conversation, shaped not by traditional banking, but by the transformative potential of stablecoins. In this candid and wide-ranging discussion, she unpacks everything from the absurdity of 13% ATM fees to the promise of on-chain FX, the state of stablecoin legislation in the US, and why Noble is quietly building something that could reshape merchant loyalty as we know it.
Whether you're a crypto native or just curious about where payments are headed, this conversation offers a grounded and exciting look at what's coming next.
Dayana Aleksandrova
Welcome to the Payments Pulse, WalletConnect's talk show, where we find out what is going on in the world of money — both traditional finance and digital assets. Today, our guest is the founder of Noble, Jelena Noble. Jelena, welcome to the show.
Jelena
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Dayana Aleksandrova
Thanks for being here. You have a very impressive track record in the world of payments — but how did you arrive here? What is the path that took you to payments?
Jelena
We are focused on the emerging potential behind stablecoins, so any payment knowledge or application really originates from that lens. Sometimes that means we miss things that originated in the traditional payment space.
But I think that perspective gives us a pretty good look at the transformative potential for stablecoins as legal payment instruments to truly disrupt the traditional legacy system.
Dayana Aleksandrova
Love to hear that. You've been bullish on stablecoins and on payments that don't necessarily need cards. WalletConnect Pay is one such technology — people can pay directly by scanning QR codes with stablecoins from their wallets.
Why are you bullish on this kind of technology, and how do you think it could reshape the world of finance?
Jelena
For a very long time, the payments landscape hasn't been disrupted at a fundamental level. If you consider the traditional flow from point A to point B — whether that's B2B, B2C, or P2P — a lot of those flows run on traditional rails, and fees are taken at each hop.
I like to say that when the internet went mainstream, telecommunications infrastructure was upgraded to support instant communication between anyone in the world, at the speed of light. But the payments industry didn't make that same upgrade.
With stablecoin legislation coming to the forefront in the US, we now have the potential to upgrade the payment system with stablecoin rails — and truly fulfill the original promise of the internet: for anyone in the world to send money natively, at the speed of light.
Dayana Aleksandrova
That's such a great point — and I love that you brought legislation into the mix. We've seen the GENIUS Act and different initiatives that make it easier for stablecoins to truly proliferate and change the industry.
Now, I'm going to reference one of your tweets. You posted a photo of a Santander ATM charging $6.95 in access fees and another $1.57 in exchange rate markup — 13%. You wrote: "13%?! Banks are not your friend. We need on-chain FX, and we need it now!"
How can stablecoins solve this and make things more fair for people globally?
Jelena
That tweet and that photo were genuinely shocking. I recently moved to the US from Canada and was still setting up my US banking, so I was relying on my Canadian bank account in the meantime. That was the markup on Canadian to USD foreign exchange, plus an additional fee just to physically take out cash — very onerous, and very arbitrary.
When we talk about stablecoins, a few things become possible.
First, on-chain FX — the ability to swap in and out of stablecoins, both USD and non-USD — will continue to proliferate. We already see early markets forming around USD and Euro FX pairs.
If we expect people to always transact in US dollars, that's simply not consistent with their everyday lived experience. Building deep liquidity pools of both USD and non-USD stablecoins is really important so we can have price-efficient markets for on-chain FX.
The end goal is a world where consumers never need to off-ramp at all — you simply swap between coins and natively pay for things in your own currency.
Dayana Aleksandrova
That is such a great vision of the future. Now, speaking of efficiency — let's talk infrastructure. What do you think is the missing piece, or something that's broken in payment rails, that's preventing stablecoins from dominating the current system?
Jelena
We've actually made a lot of improvements on the infrastructure side over the past two to four years. Noble was originally founded as an infrastructure project, solving inefficiencies at the protocol level — everything from speed and throughput to gas abstraction, interoperability, and on-chain orchestration between different assets. It's no longer as cumbersome to interact with blockchain rails as it used to be.
That said, the thing that's still missing goes back to my earlier point: liquidity. Right now, the market is 99% US dollar-denominated, which is great for USD stablecoins and most of DeFi. But if we're looking at payments in the traditional sense — not trading, not DeFi, but the kind of experience you'd get with a neobank or fintech app — we need more liquidity and more ability to move in and out of non-dollar stablecoins.
The other gap is point-of-sale acceptance of stablecoins — which is really the work WalletConnect is doing. That is still underdeveloped. Being able to use stablecoins in a meaningful everyday context still has some missing pieces, both on the FX side and at the point of sale.
Dayana Aleksandrova
That is so important. So many people are getting paid in stablecoins. So many people are holding their money in stablecoins. Not being able to spend them just doesn't make sense.
Where do you see the future of stablecoins in the next three years?
Jelena
Total market cap will definitely grow beyond where it is today. Thanks to legislation — especially the GENIUS Act in the US — stablecoins will become more a part of everyday interactions. And crucially, nobody will necessarily need to know they're using a stablecoin under the hood.
A good analogy is the rise of cloud computing. When you upload files to an app, you don't know it's running on cloud infrastructure — but it's fast, it's cheap, and it just works. I think we'll see a similar effect with stablecoin rails. People will use applications because they're fast, cheap, and useful — and under the hood, those apps will be leveraging stablecoin infrastructure.
Dayana Aleksandrova
It's beautiful when something just works and gives you the benefits without you needing to be an expert on what's under the hood.
Consumers aside — what are the big benefits for merchants to accept stablecoin payments, and what obstacles are currently in the way?
Jelena
A few things.
First, the GENIUS Act isn't yet a reality. It's still coming into effect around early 2027. So while the crypto world and fintech space are experimenting, legacy merchants are still waiting to understand exactly what GENIUS will mean for them.
Second, the rewards discussion is still unresolved. Every stablecoin in the US context is collateralized by short-term US Treasury bills, which currently yield around 3.5%. There's a significant business opportunity around sharing that yield with customers — either directly or through distribution partners. The GENIUS Act as currently written allows merchants to share that yield as a reward, but the exact template and guidelines are still under discussion.
Third, the merchant acquirer landscape is still underdeveloped. Companies like Fiserv have made announcements around stablecoins, but how they'll process these payment types going forward is still unclear.
And fourth — related to all of the above — is the point-of-sale settlement question. Ideally, we'd have native stablecoin acceptance. But right now, if you use a stablecoin wallet with an accompanying physical card, that transaction settles in fiat, not crypto. Native acceptance is still being worked out, and that's something we still need.
Dayana Aleksandrova
There's a lot to consider on the merchant side. What we're seeing at WalletConnect with WalletConnect Pay is that merchants and PSPs care about regulation, smooth processes, and not having to connect with every wallet individually — but also not having to uproot their entire existing flow.
Finally — where are you headed with Noble in the near future? What are you working on and excited about?
Jelena
We have some exciting announcements coming in the next few weeks.
For the past three years, Noble has been building stablecoin issuance infrastructure — connecting separate applications to a single source of liquidity, primarily USDC, alongside our own Noble Dollar (USDN). We've been able to generate significant demand, process a lot of flow, and this is now battle-tested infrastructure.
What we've noticed, though, is that there's still a consumer layer missing from a lot of this technology. Most stablecoin volume today is DeFi activity, trading, and crypto-native use cases.
Over the past few months, as we've gone deeper into the traditional payments space, we've identified a big opportunity to disrupt the existing rewards economy — merchant loyalty and brand loyalty specifically. We've been working on this in stealth, but there'll be more to share in the coming weeks.
The goal is for these stablecoin rails to power fundamentally new products with very familiar use cases — things that feel seamless, feel familiar, and under the hood, leverage this truly disruptive infrastructure.
Dayana Aleksandrova
For everyone watching this episode of Payments Pulse — go follow Jelena and Noble so you don't miss their upcoming announcements. Jelena, thank you so much for being a guest on the show.
Jelena
Thank you so much for having me.