Cray

This survey reinforces what's next. We've spent years building the rails. Institutions already understand the value of blockchain and are actively exploring trading, investing, tokenisation, and payments. Now, real challenge is retail adoption. helping everyday businesses and consumers realise the benefits of blockchain-based payments.

Great to see Emirates and Dubai Duty Free embracing crypto payments. The next is making crypto payments accessible to every retailer, restaurant, cafe, and online business in Dubai. That's what we're building at @craydotpro.

Went to a high-end event expecting a few intros. Some people were genuinely curious and interested in crypto payments. Some were like tech is amazing, but i just don't understand it, too much for me. I get it. Crypto is something not everyone understands. So it might feel scary to a lot of traditional business owners here. Left with 4 serious contacts to followup with. The followup is where it actually happens. Building crypto payments in Dubai the hard way. Doing the work on the ground.

Crypto Cards Are Winning (For now), Stablecoin Payments Are Already Big Stablecoin payments are showing strong growth through 2025–26, surpassing $300B in monthly volume. Most of this today is: - B2B - Remittances - Prefunding - Card-linked spending. - Not retail checkout yet. This shows stablecoins are already operating in real financial infrastructure, just not visible to consumers. 1. Card-linked stablecoin payments have exploded because they require zero behavioural change. -Merchants keep Visa/Mastercard. - Consumers keep tapping cards. - Stablecoins stay in the background. But this is just step 1 in the adoption path, not the destination. 2. Direct stablecoin checkout is still early. The report is on-point.. Merchants benefit from: - Lower fees - Faster settlement - Better capital efficiency. But adoption is slow because - Cards already work - Consumers are habituated - Incentives aren’t aligned yet - And it requires real on-ground work Top-down players (Card issuers, PSPs, licensed giants) try to solve this from above. That path is clearer, capital-heavy, and safer. But real 0 to 1 shifts usually look messy at the beginning. So native checkout isn’t winning today. 3. One very important section is around stablecoin yield. If users can hold digital dollars that - Move instantly - Settle globally - Earn yield Then traditional deposits lose their monopoly. This is a structural shift, and banks see it. That’s why regulation and partnerships are accelerating. 4.Currently, we are in a phase where new tech is wrapped in old rails (cards + stables). We have already started the next phase, which focuses on improving native UX - Smart Wallets - Gasless Transactions - Native Account Abstraction - Inclusion guarantees(EIP-8141 + FOCIL conversations) Then Native Checkout becomes normal. Not there yet, but we are getting there slowly. 5. Cards are dominating because they have - Distribution - Risk systems - Habits. But stablecoins checkout wins on - Cost - Settlement - Programmability - Global reach We are already building towards better wallet UX. As account abstraction becomes native, the friction gap narrows. When paying with stablecoins becomes as easy as tapping a card, merchants will actually care about the 2–3% they save. This report confirms something important: Stablecoins are already reshaping payments, mostly behind the scenes. Cards are the bridge. Not the end state. Direct stablecoin checkout isn’t mainstream yet. But the foundations are being laid. And when incentives finally align, it will move fast.

We're testing @craydotpro the hard way. Walking into shops. Talking to merchants. Building Cray in the real world. This is how new payment rails are built.

Stablecoin payments look crowded because most solutions solve the crypto side of the problem, not the payments side. Merchants don't care about tokens or chains. They care about: • money arriving instantly • predictable value • lower fees • no fraud • no chargebacks • clean accounting Users care about freedom. Their assets live across chains, wallets, and stablecoins. They don't want to swap, bridge, or migrate to a "supported network." Payments should work wherever their money already lives. Anything that forces the user to reorganize their funds -> bad UX. Anything that forces the merchant to understand networks -> bad product. That's why most crypto checkout flows end up routing into legacy rails. Stablecoins -> card network -> payment processor -> bank -> settlement. It works, but the cost structure and latency stay the same. A real payment system should: 1. Abstract the chain User pays from any wallet, any chain, any stable. The system handles translation. 2. Preserve self-custody No pooled balances, no custodial wallets. It should work with EOAs, smart wallets, multisigs. 3. Be deterministic for merchants Clear asset, clear settlement path, no surprises. That's why we built Cray. Not "crypto payments." Stablecoins as a payment network: chainless for users, predictable for merchants, self-custody preserved.