The fact that I have the Geeta memorized in two different formats is a big factor in my becoming an atheist in teen years and also my extra disdain for Hinduism over my general disdain for religion. It's such a suffocating philosophy!

Geetha Panchapakesan is one of the most deeply embedded payments operators to ever cross over into building for stablecoins. She spent 18 years at Mastercard, MoneyGram, PayPal, Visa Direct, and Circle, working on the infrastructure that moves cross-border money at global scale. At MoneyGram, she led the expansion from cash-to-cash into real-time digital payouts across India, Mexico, Nigeria, and the Philippines. At Circle, she was on the team that structured the Visa USDC settlement deal, the first time crypto-native issuers and acquirers could settle in stablecoins on the card network. Tesser was built on a conviction that 45,000 banks and PSPs will adopt stablecoin rails for cross-border payments, but almost none of them will build the infrastructure themselves. Geetha left Circle to build the payments processor those institutions are missing. Tesser has raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Castle Island Ventures, with Anthemis and Strobe Ventures, and is onboarding banks and PSPs across emerging markets. Geetha's conversation with @dr3wrogers in NYC. 01:34 - Geetha introduces Tesser 03:42 - Leaving Visa and Circle 07:09 - The Tesser team: Dana Weinstein and Marvin Arnold 08:44 - Starting at Mastercard and the predatory side of financial inclusion 11:28 - MoneyGram and building digital payout rails 16:27 - The last mile problem and why it matters more than anything else 19:15 - How MoneyGram prefunded accounts in every market to fake instant payments 22:29 - Why cross-border payments are the most complex layer in finance 23:00 - The Visa x Circle deal and discovering stablecoins 25:14 - Breaking down how Visa's USDC settlement actually works 30:20 - Why Visa couldn't hold stablecoins overnight and the accounting rule behind it 33:27 - From a few hundred thousand to a $10 billion settlement run rate 35:21 - Will Visa and Mastercard survive the stablecoin shift 37:43 - Stablecoins will be rails, not wallets 39:14 - PSPs that laughed her out of the room now settle 6% in stablecoins 40:31 - The MoneyGram prefunding story that made stablecoins click 44:26 - Beginning of the hockey stick 46:01 - The playbook for banks adopting stablecoin rails 49:12 - Why emerging market banks are losing deposits to crypto 53:48 - How Tesser compares to Bridge, BVNK, and other orchestrators 57:09 - Wallets, custody, on/off ramps, and how the platform fits together 59:44 - What Tesser does better than anyone else in the market Episode 0049, presented by @altitude