Stablecoins are moving beyond their origins in cryptocurrency markets to become part of the infrastructure for cross-border payments, treasury management and foreign exchange. As settlement shifts from chains of correspondent banks to always-on digital networks, financial institutions are increasingly exploring how stablecoin rails can reduce costs, accelerate transactions and connect markets across borders.
In an interview with Korea IT Times, Norman Wooding, founder and CEO of Swiss digital asset firm SCRYPT, explains why Africa has become a major testing ground for real-world stablecoin adoption and what its experience could teach policymakers and financial institutions in Asia. He also examines the convergence of artificial intelligence and programmable money, arguing that trust, accountability and regulatory certainty—not technological capability alone—will determine how quickly intelligent financial networks develop.
Wooding says Korea already possesses many of the foundations required to become a leading digital finance hub, including digitally fluent consumers, advanced connectivity, major technology companies and deep capital markets. However, he emphasises that enforceable regulation, international interoperability and the recognition of foreign licences will be as important as domestic stablecoin issuance in determining Korea’s position in the next generation of global financial infrastructure.
Q1. Stablecoins are rapidly evolving from cryptocurrency applications into critical financial infrastructure for global payments and treasury management. Looking ahead over the next five to ten years, how do you see stablecoins reshaping the architecture of the international financial system?
Norman Wooding: The direction is set. Stablecoins used to be the on-ramp to crypto. Now they are how money moves across cross-border payments, treasury and foreign exchange. The institutions that were sceptical a few years ago are building on the same rails today.
Architecturally, one thing changes. Settlement stops being a chain of correspondent banks and becomes a single layer that is always open. Everything else, including credit, custody and compliance, reorganises around that layer.
Once you have sent money abroad in seconds, it is hard to go back to cut-off times, time zones and a fee at every hop. I expect the word “crypto” to retire within the decade. Infrastructure wins by becoming boring. That is our business at SCRYPT: Switzerland’s largest stablecoin venue, where money moves.
Q2. Africa has emerged as one of the world’s most compelling real-world laboratories for stablecoin adoption. What structural challenges—such as dollar shortages, currency volatility and inefficient cross-border payment rails—have driven this transformation, and what lessons should policymakers and financial institutions in Asia draw from Africa’s experience?
Norman Wooding: Necessity, mostly. Africa did not adopt stablecoins because of a white paper. When your currency is volatile and dollars are scarce, a digital dollar that settles in seconds is not innovation; it is relief.
There is a structural factor behind it. Correspondent banks spent a decade withdrawing from the region, so the cost of moving a dollar in and out rose while the demand remained unchanged. The flows already existed. Stablecoins gave them a better rail.
We expanded settlement coverage across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Nigeria this year. What we are seeing is commercial demand, not speculation.
One lesson is transferable. Where rules were written and channels were licensed, the activity came into the open. Where there were bans, it went underground and kept growing. For banks and payment firms, their clients are already using these rails. The practical question is who will operate the rail for them.
Q3. Artificial intelligence is transforming financial services while stablecoins are modernising payment infrastructure. How do you see AI and stablecoins converging to create the next generation of intelligent financial networks?
Norman Wooding: AI can already reason. What it cannot do is hold money. An agent can borrow a card inside somebody’s walled garden, but it cannot open an account or maintain a balance of its own. The agentic economy therefore hits a wall the moment it touches real money.
Stablecoins are, so far, the only form of dollars that software can hold and move by itself. Capability is therefore not the constraint; trust is. Models still hallucinate, and the liability rests with the firm that deploys them.
We support agentic payments today within guardrails for our clients’ own flows, but I believe genuine autonomy is years away rather than months. That gap defines the work ahead: establishing limits, permissions and revocation mechanisms, as well as an audit trail that a board can sign off on.
Q4. Having worked with regulated digital asset infrastructure across more than 40 jurisdictions, what regulatory principles distinguish countries emerging as global digital finance hubs from those at risk of falling behind?
Norman Wooding: Clarity, consistency and engagement.
We needed rules that were written down and did not move. You can plan around a framework that is strict, but you cannot plan around uncertainty. A plan on a presentation slide is not a framework; you can only build on rules that exist today.
We chose Switzerland because the authorities were willing to meet with us. Our asset management arm now operates as a FINMA-authorised portfolio manager under the Financial Institutions Act (FinIA), actively managing digital assets.
That is the distinction that matters: a licence that allows you to operate genuinely, rather than one that simply hangs on a wall. Plenty of jurisdictions have published frameworks. Far fewer have issued licences that provide firms with the authority to do anything meaningful.
Q5. Cross-border payments remain one of the least efficient components of the global financial system. Beyond faster settlement, what fundamental changes are still required before businesses can move value across borders as seamlessly as information moves across the internet?
Norman Wooding: Three things.
First, the last mile. A payment is only as fast as its slowest leg, so local liquidity, local currencies and licensed payout partners matter more than the technology itself.
Second, compliance must move at the speed of money. If a board cannot audit a transaction, an institution will not touch it. Screening and analytics therefore belong inside the payment path, not bolted on afterwards.
Third, there must be recognition between regulatory frameworks. Europe’s passporting system is a real step forward, but it stops at Europe’s borders. Across most of the world, a new border still means a new rulebook. We spend most of our time absorbing that complexity so our clients do not have to.
Close those gaps and money simply moves. It should have moved like that years ago.
Q6. As governments around the world accelerate digital transformation, what role should stablecoins play alongside central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), traditional banking systems and tokenised financial assets? Do you see these models competing with one another or evolving as complementary pillars of the global financial system?
Norman Wooding: They will be complementary, although their respective roles are still being settled.
Stablecoins have become the open, always-on settlement layer. CBDCs are sovereign instruments, and it is for central banks to define their role. Banks retain their roles in credit, deposits and customer relationships, and many are connecting to the new rails rather than resisting them.
Tokenised assets put money to work. We integrated Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenised money market fund, enabling clients to move idle digital dollars into Treasury yield without leaving the ecosystem.
For our clients, these elements come together on one platform where money moves, works and is held. The competition will not be among the four models. It will be between networks that are transparent about how they are governed and who stands behind them, and those that are not.
Q7. Korea is positioning itself as a leading AI and digital economy while strengthening its fintech and digital asset ecosystem. From your global perspective, what strategic priorities should Korea pursue if it aims to become a major hub for next-generation financial infrastructure over the coming decade?
Norman Wooding: Korea already has what most markets would love to start with: digitally fluent consumers, world-class connectivity, serious technology companies and deep capital markets. The demand is demonstrated rather than theoretical. Korean users were already among the heaviest users of dollar stablecoins well before the country had a domestic framework for issuing one.
How Korea sequences its policies is a matter for Korean policymakers and institutions. The issuance question now being considered is genuinely difficult, and I will not pretend to have a view on where it should land.
What I can offer is a narrower perspective from the builder’s side. Firms planning for the next decade do not wait for the ideal regulatory regime. They go where something enforceable exists today, and they interpret delay as a signal in itself.
The other thing worth protecting is the outward leg. A won-denominated stablecoin may solve the domestic rail, but Korean companies will still need to settle with counterparties outside that network. Interoperability and the recognition of foreign licences will matter as much as the issuance rules that are currently the focus of debate.
Korea is better placed than most. I am watching what it builds.
