A conversation with Aishwary Gupta, Global Head of Payments at Polygon
Payments Pulse is WalletConnect's interview series exploring the future of payments. Each episode features in-depth conversations with leaders across payments, fintech, and crypto, focused on one core question: how do we make crypto payments work in the real world?
Before he was leading payments strategy at one of the largest blockchain networks in the world, Aishwary Gupta was moving billions of dollars across the globe for American Express and carrying a laptop to team lunches.
"Someone from my team was always carrying a laptop because there's some market that hasn't opened yet or is about to close," Aishwary recalls. "Your first market opens in Hong Kong early in the morning, and the last market closes after the US. That's almost 20 hours of work."
Watching the friction of global money movement up close sparked his interest in blockchain. When American Express invested in Ripple and launched an innovation lab, Aishwary saw the potential. But he also saw the problem.
"I was like, wow, this is the best technology. Why are we using Swift? But then once they showed me how the money was actually moving on Ripple, I was like, yeah, nothing will move here. You don't have a stablecoin. What you're moving is XRP tokens, which are fluctuating in nature. Good luck moving $5 billion a day of American Express on this."
That realization that the technology existed but the infrastructure wasn't ready is what eventually brought him to Polygon and to the payments challenges he's tackling today.
The Three Problems Holding Back Crypto Payments
After years of working at the intersection of traditional finance and crypto, Aishwary sees three fundamental problems that need to be solved before mainstream adoption can happen:
1. Fragmentation is Everywhere
"On Polygon alone, we have around 43 different USD stablecoins," Aishwary explains. "How do you explain to a normal person outside of crypto that when they swap between one USD and another USD, they lost money on slippage?"
The fragmentation isn't just about stablecoins. It's chains, wallets, gas tokens, and liquidity pools - all operating in silos.
2. Abstraction is Missing
In traditional banking, you don't think about whether your dollars are "JP Morgan dollars" or "Bank of America dollars." The complexity is abstracted away. Crypto hasn't achieved this yet.
"When I'm going multi-chain, I need gas in every chain," Aishwary says. "For someone like me, if it's supported by major exchanges, I can drop some ETH there. But for a normal person, it's impossible. You can't have gas fees on 20 different chains because you want to use 20 different chains."
3. Regulatory Uncertainty Persists
While some regions have moved forward with clear frameworks, others remain in limbo. "A lot of people are still in the mix whether they should do it or whether they should not do it."
"It Just Works"
When asked about his experience using WalletConnect Pay to buy coffee at a physical checkout, Aishwary's response was simple: "It just works."
"What we need to do is abstract away all of these technicalities. Applications like WalletConnect Pay are a significant step towards that. As a merchant, they don't care what they're receiving because the settlement is happening the way they've always had settlement. The person who has stablecoins can now effectively go out and use them without caring about what they have, where they have it, or how they're paying. It just works."
This is the experience that will drive adoption, not explaining blockchain mechanics to everyday users, but making crypto payments feel as familiar as tapping a card.
Why Crypto Cards Are Just a Bandaid
Aishwary doesn't mince words when it comes to crypto debit cards.
"It's a bandaid solution. Why? Because ultimately nothing is happening in stablecoins. You deposit stablecoins in your crypto card, and then what happens? The entire money movement is still web2. It's still moving from banks. The merchant settles with the card providers, they off-ramp the money, and everything works on a web2 rail."
He continues: "Essentially nothing has changed. It's a bandaid right now because that's the fastest way you can spend your crypto. But I in no way see that as the end use for crypto."
Native stablecoin payments, where funds move directly from wallet to merchant without touching legacy rails represent the actual future.
The Real Math of Institutional Adoption
Aishwary brings the receipts when explaining why institutions haven't moved on-chain en masse. The numbers are stark.
"Let's say American Express wants to move $5 billion a day on-chain. They're collecting different stablecoins across 132 entities. They need to consolidate into one USD stablecoin for their balance sheet. If you convert $5 billion on Ethereum or Solana, you would lose somewhere around $1.5 million in slippage. Per day."
For comparison: "Amex does 30 SWIFT transfers a day at $25 each. Nobody will come on-chain if those are the economics."
Then there's off-ramping. "Everyone is charging 20-25 basis points to move that money. Imagine 25 bips being lost on $5 billion daily. Nobody will do it."
These aren't hypothetical concerns. They're the actual blockers preventing serious institutional volume from moving on-chain.
The Stablecoin Supercycle Is Coming
Despite the challenges, Aishwary sees massive growth ahead, perhaps more than anyone expects.
"I think there will be 100,000 stablecoins in the next two years. Everyone saw how Circle and Tether made money on the float, and now everyone wants that pie."
He sees gaming companies launching stablecoins to keep money circulating in their ecosystems. Brands running multiple business lines creating their own tokens. The float economics are simply too attractive.
"If the money is circulating in the game, the reserves are with you, and you're making money. Why wouldn't you?"
What Needs to Happen Next
For Aishwary, the path forward requires turnkey solutions that package everything a fintech needs into a single integration.
"If you're a fintech who wants to accept crypto, what do you have to do? First, you need a POS software. Then you need a wallet company. Then custody. Then on-ramp and off-ramp. Then you go to blockchains and there are so many blockchains. For every category, there are so many players."
The company that solves this, that offers everything in one box, deployable in one or two API calls will be the one that unlocks mainstream adoption.
"The 20 things you would have needed to enable crypto payments, all in one box. That is where I would see the company that probably would succeed the most."
The Bottom Line
Three weeks. That's how long Aishwary was homeless in Singapore because his rent payment got stuck in SWIFT limbo. The receiving bank flagged his name as incorrect but only after he'd transferred the full year's rent. He spent weeks chasing the bank daily to get his money released.
"If this was happening on-chain and you're sending it to the correct address, you would immediately know that the money has reached the other side. There's no time gap. No chasing the bank."
This is the promise of crypto payments: instant finality, global reach, and no intermediaries holding your money hostage. The technology exists. The infrastructure is being built. The remaining work is making it invisible, making it "just work."