How Stablecoins Are Rewiring Global Payments | Borderless CPO Alex Garn
In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Chris Storaker sits down with Alex Garn, Chief Product Officer at Borderless, to unpack how stablecoins are quietly transforming cross-border payments — and what it actually takes to move money at scale across jurisdictions. Alex walks through Borderless’ role as an orchestration layer for global on- and off-ramps, why the company stays out of the flow of funds, and how a single API can replace dozens of fragmented integrations across local regulators, liquidity providers, and banking partners. We explore why stablecoins are moving beyond trading and DeFi collateral into real-world enterprise payments, where they already outperform legacy rails on settlement speed, transparency, and custody — especially across emerging market corridors like Latin America and Southeast Asia. The conversation also digs into the hard parts: liquidity constraints by corridor, KYC and compliance friction, why US–EU payments still favor SWIFT, and whether incumbents like Visa, Mastercard, and SWIFT are more likely to be disrupted or to acquire their way into the future. Finally, Alex shares his outlook on regulatory clarity post-GENIUS, the coming wave of corporate stablecoin adoption, and why distribution — not branding — will determine which stablecoins ultimately win. 00:00 — Intro: Alex joins The Defiant Podcast 01:30 — From DeFi & data science to stablecoin payments 04:10 — What Borderless does: orchestration vs custody 07:10 — Why cross-border on/off-ramps are still fragmented 10:00 — Stablecoins beyond DeFi: real enterprise payment use cases 12:45 — Treasury management, payouts, and B2B adoption 15:30 — Liquidity realities: when $10M+ stablecoin payments work 18:10 — Why US → Latin America leads stablecoin adoption 20:30 — Where stablecoins don’t win (yet): US–EU & SWIFT 22:50 — KYC as the biggest bottleneck in crypto payments 26:00 — Self-custody, bank risk, and corporate treasuries 29:30 — Stablecoins vs SWIFT: speed, cost, and settlement 33:00 — Visa, Mastercard, SWIFT, and the M&A race 36:40 — Regulation after GENIUS and global spillover effects 39:40 — What enterprise adoption looks like in the next 2–3 years 42:30 — Stablecoin fragmentation, liquidity, and consolidation 45:00 — Closing thoughts: what excites Alex most about the future