IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews
Go one-on-one with the innovators, disruptors, leaders, and decision-makers driving change in FinTech and financial services. IBS Intelligence delivers exclusive global interviews that uncover strategies, challenges, and the ideas powering the next wave of financial technology.
IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews
EP1027: Building a stablecoin-powered Islamic digital bank
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This interview explores how Fasset is expanding its global reach through plans to establish a regulated digital Islamic bank in Malaysia under the leadership of Rafiza Ghazali. By leveraging the Labuan financial framework, the company aims to integrate stablecoin technology with traditional Shariah-compliant services such as asset-backed savings and cross-border payments. The discussion highlights Fasset's strategy of using blockchain infrastructure behind the scenes to solve real-world financial fragmentation, its disciplined regulatory approach, and its ambition to scale across multiple international markets over the next five years while building long-term consumer trust through reliable service delivery and practical financial utility.
So imagine trying to mix uh oil and water. Aaron Ross Powell Right.
SPEAKER_01Two things that just do not want to go together.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Exactly. Because on one side, you have the wild, decentralized, you know, totally borderless world of crypto stable coins.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Which is a technology basically born out of uh disrupting the whole concept of central banking.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Spot on. And then on the flip side, you have the ancient, deeply strict, and heavily governed rules of Islamic finance.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell A system that is fundamentally built on absolute traditional oversight.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Right. So today's mission is exploring how combining these two total opposites is quietly building the blueprint for the future of global digital banking.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell It really sounds counterintuitive, I know. But the friction between those two extremes is producing a wildly efficient system.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It really is.
SPEAKER_01And for any of you listening who manage cross-border finances or run a business that deals internationally. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Or if you're just exhausted by how fragmented and slow current banking infrastructures are.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Exactly. The intersection of these two worlds gives us a concrete look at how money will actually move in the next five years.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell And our roadmap for figuring out how this all actually works comes from a single incredibly detailed source. It's an interview from the May 2026 edition of the IBSI FinTech Journal.
SPEAKER_01A really fascinating read.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they sat down with Rafiza Ghazali. She's the managing director of consumer banking at Facet, a role she just took on in February of this year.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's unpack this because her resume is honestly the foundation of why this whole strategy matters.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you have to look at her background.
SPEAKER_00She brings over two decades of experience spanning central banking, capital markets, and Islamic finance. But her crucial credential.
SPEAKER_01The one that really stands out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, is that she is one of the rare executives in Southeast Asia to take a licensed digital bank, KAF Digital Bank, from its initial concept phase all the way through to a full, successful public launch.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell And that operational experience changes the entire conversation.
SPEAKER_00How so?
SPEAKER_01Well, taking a digital bank from zero to a live public launch strips away all the theoretical hype.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Right. It's not just ideas on a whiteboard anymore.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Ghazali's interview highlights a fundamental philosophy she pulled from that KAF digital bank experience. She calls it a clarity of purpose.
SPEAKER_00Clarity of purpose.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. She argues that customers do not adopt financial products out of curiosity. They adopt them because the product fundamentally solves a point of friction in their daily economic lives.
SPEAKER_00Let's look at the mechanics of that clarity of purpose. I was thinking of it like a highly anticipated restaurant opening downtown.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Everyone lines up on the first night.
SPEAKER_00Right. People will wait around the block just for the novelty. They want to experience the hype, you know, take a picture of the decor.
SPEAKER_01Maybe try the signature appetizer.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But they only become regulars if the service and the food are consistently excellent on a random Tuesday night.
SPEAKER_01If the experience is unpredictable, they just never return.
SPEAKER_00Which brings up a great question. According to Ghazali's interview, why do so many highly hyped digital banks hit a massive growth plateau almost immediately after their initial launch phase?
SPEAKER_01What's fascinating here is how she attributes that plateau to the illusion of regulatory approval.
SPEAKER_00The illusion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because a banking license provides credibility, sure, but credibility is not utility.
SPEAKER_00Just because you're legal doesn't mean you're useful.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Sustained growth does not materialize from short-term customer acquisition tactics, you know, like handing out $50 signup bonuses.
SPEAKER_00Or running aggressive social media campaigns.
SPEAKER_01Right. A bank has to continually refine its interface and its product suite based on real-world usage data.
SPEAKER_00So if a digital bank launches a flashy app, but the direct deposit feature takes three days to clear.
SPEAKER_01Or the customer support is totally unreachable.
SPEAKER_00The user abandons the platform, they stop serving a daily need, so the momentum just stalls.
SPEAKER_01And Facet is avoiding that a cold start problem entirely. They aren't launching a standalone app and trying to beg users to try it out.
SPEAKER_00Right. They are taking an audience that is already in the building, so to speak, and offering them a better toolkit.
SPEAKER_01Facet already has a massive global community engaging with digital assets.
SPEAKER_00So Ghazali's strategy involves layering core banking services directly over that established user base. Things like moving money, daily savings, and investments.
SPEAKER_01And the psychology of that layering strategy is just brilliant from a customer acquisition standpoint.
SPEAKER_00Because the users are already there.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Facet lowers their acquisition cost to nearly zero for these banking products because they are integrating financial utility into an ecosystem where the user is already active.
SPEAKER_00You don't have to convince a user to download a new app.
SPEAKER_01No, you simply provide them a way to hold, save, or send the value they already have on your platform.
SPEAKER_00And the volume Facet is already processing is staggering. The interview drops some major data points here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, these numbers are huge.
SPEAKER_00Their platform boasts over $12 billion in annualized transaction volume. And in 2025 alone, their institutional user base grew by tenfold.
SPEAKER_01Tenfold in one year.
SPEAKER_00But I see a massive friction point here. Facet's stated goal is to make banking predictable, reliable, and deeply trustworthy for the everyday consumer. Yet the core technology they are utilizing to achieve this is stable coins.
SPEAKER_01Which carries a lot of baggage.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Even if Facet targets a mass market, the word stablecoin still triggers alarm bells for the average small business owner. They associate anything crypto adjacent with volatility and risk.
SPEAKER_01It's a huge psychological hurdle.
SPEAKER_00So how on earth do you market this to people unfamiliar with crypto?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, marketing stable coins to a traditional merchant sounds like trying to sell a luxury sedan by only talking about the fuel injection mechanics.
SPEAKER_01Instead of letting them just feel the leather steering wheel.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Well, Ghazali solves that exact psychological hurdle by explicitly refusing to market the technology.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Her approach is absolute abstraction. You do not explain the fuel injection system.
SPEAKER_00So what do you focus on?
SPEAKER_01Ghazali stresses that a stablecoin-led strategy is entirely about the results generated by the technology. Faster settlement times, lower transaction fees, and verifiable transparency on a ledger. But the technology itself must remain completely invisible to the end user.
SPEAKER_00So it functions as invisible plumbing. The user sees a standard, comforting interface, they type in an amount, hit send, and the money arrives.
SPEAKER_01They don't need to know a stablecoin is doing the heavy lifting in the background.
SPEAKER_00Let's dive into why that invisible plumbing is so necessary for cross-border movement, though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because traditional international banking relies on correspondent banks. Aaron Powell Right.
SPEAKER_00If you send money from Malaysia to a vendor in South America, that money doesn't travel in a straight line.
SPEAKER_01No, it hops between multiple intermediary banks. And each one takes a fee and each operates on different time zones and settlement systems.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It's a mess. But a stable coin running on a blockchain eliminates all those intermediaries.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Exactly. The settlement is peer-to-peer and near instantaneous. Think of it like upgrading a city from copper telephone wires to fiber optic internet.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_01Right. When an internet service provider sells you a package, they don't market the refractive index of the glass fibers.
SPEAKER_00No, they market the fact that you can stream 4K movies without buffering.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. FAS is providing the financial equivalent of buffer-free streaming powered by a fiber optic ledger that the user never has to understand.
SPEAKER_00But you cannot test experimental, borderless financial plumbing on the open market without risking massive regulatory blowback.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00You need a controlled environment to prove this invisible plumbing is safe. And that brings us to the regulatory cornerstone of FACET strategy, which is Malaysia.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00In October of 2025, Facet secured conditional approval from the Labuan Financial Services Authority.
SPEAKER_01And this isn't just a basic business permit we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00No, it allows them to offer full-service digital Islamic banking within a regulated sandbox specifically designed for Islamic fintech. So here's where it gets really interesting. How do you marry the strict, highly traditional oversight of Islamic finance with the modern, borderless nature of digital assets?
SPEAKER_01It's tough because the mechanism of making a stablecoin sharia compliant requires a complete structural overhaul of how digital assets normally function. Well, traditional mass market stable coins, the ones making headlines all the time, are usually backed one-to-one by fiat currency like the US dollar. Right. And the companies issuing those stable coins take those billions of backing dollars and park them in traditional interest-bearing bank accounts or government treasuries.
SPEAKER_00Ah, so they earn massive yields on those reserves.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But in Islamic finance, the concept of Reba or generating money from money through interest is strictly prohibited.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell So a standard stable coin fundamentally violates Islamic financial principles because its underlying reserves are generating interest.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Right. It's a complete non-starter. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00So if FACET cannot use standard interest-bearing reserves, how do they create a digital dollar that holds its value without violating those principles?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell They replace the interest-bearing cash with tangible Sharia compliant real-world assets. Okay. The source details a massive move FACET made to facilitate this. It was a memorandum of understanding signed in the fourth quarter of 2025 with Ajman Bank.
SPEAKER_00Oh, Ajman Bank.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Ajman Bank provides decades of institutional credibility and rigorous Sharia oversight. And Facet provides the digital infrastructure.
SPEAKER_00So together they are launching Sharia compliant tokenized assets.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Instead of offering a savings account that pays a standard interest yield, they offer an asset-backed savings product.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Meaning the user's stable coin represents a fractional share of a tangible, rigorously vetted physical asset.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell or a Sharia compliant commercial venture, exactly. The user gains the stability and potential upside of that asset while completely avoiding the prohibited mechanism of interest.
SPEAKER_00That partnership bridges the trust gap perfectly.
SPEAKER_01It really does.
SPEAKER_00You have the absolute cutting-edge ledger technology handling the speed and efficiency enveloped within the deeply trusted, highly governed institutional framework of Adjmond Bank.
SPEAKER_01So the user feels the psychological safety of traditional banking, but experiences the operational speed of the blockchain.
SPEAKER_00And Lobe One serves as the ultimate proving ground for this hybrid model. Facet isn't just using the Malaysian sandbox as a regulatory loophole.
SPEAKER_01No, they are using it to prove to the rest of the world that highly regulated, stablecoin-based, global Islamic banking actually functions seamlessly under the strictest possible conditions.
SPEAKER_00Let's bring this macro level regulatory discussion down to the everyday user, though. We've established Facet has an existing user base, brilliant invisible plumbing, and the strict oversight of Islamic finance in a Malaysian sandbox. Right. How does this ecosystem directly benefit the end consumer sitting in an emerging market?
SPEAKER_01Well, Ghazali frames the consumer benefit around a very specific definition of inclusion.
SPEAKER_00Financial inclusion is such a buzzword these days.
SPEAKER_01It is, but Ghazali defines it as making financial services accessible and cost-effective without ever lowering security and governance standards.
SPEAKER_00Because in emerging markets, the existing financial infrastructure is notoriously fragmented.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Moving money domestically might require one app, while sending remittances requires a different provider with exorbitant fees.
SPEAKER_00And accessing dollar-denominated savings requires yet another institution.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Right. It's a headache. So Facet is building a consolidated platform designed around the reality of how people actually earn, spend, and preserve their wealth across borders.
SPEAKER_00It functions entirely like a universal travel adapter for your money.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I like that analogy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, anyone who travels internationally knows the headache of carrying five different plugs for different wall outlets.
SPEAKER_01It's the worst.
SPEAKER_00Current cross-border banking forces you to switch providers, pay exchange fees, and navigate different apps at every single stop.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00But Facet is building the universal adapter. It's a single interface where a user can securely hold their value, access asset-backed savings, and instantly transact globally without ever leaving the ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01The travel adapter analogy captures the user experience beautifully, but uh it slightly underplays the immense regulatory reality Facet faces as they expand.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, a physical travel adapter assumes you can just plug the same piece of plastic into any wall anywhere in the world. In global banking, every jurisdiction operates on entirely different legal frameworks, capital requirements, and consumer protection laws.
SPEAKER_00So as Facet scales this universal adapter to other jurisdictions, how do they avoid compromising the strict governance standards they set up in Malaysia? They face a staggering compliance challenge.
SPEAKER_01If we connect this to the bigger picture, this is where Ghazali's core philosophy for Facet's five-year vision comes into play.
SPEAKER_00Right. In the interview, she explicitly states that scale follows consistency.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. She understands that you cannot brute force global expansion. Her five-year ambition is for Facet to operate as a fully integrated digital bank across multiple key global markets.
SPEAKER_00But to achieve that without breaking the compliance structures they've built, they have to use the Labuan model as a replicable blueprint.
SPEAKER_01Precisely. By meticulously proving the safety and utility of core banking combined with regulated digital assets in Malaysia, they generate a verifiable track record.
SPEAKER_00And then they take that exact proven model and deliberately pursue licenses in new jurisdictions.
SPEAKER_01Adapting to local frameworks while refusing to dilute their own internal governance standards. They build it perfectly once and scale the consistency.
SPEAKER_00So what does this all mean for the broader landscape of how we handle our money?
SPEAKER_01Whoa.
SPEAKER_00Looking at Rafiza Ghazali's strategy, the defining takeaway is that the future of banking will not be defined by the loudest, most aggressive crypto apps shouting about digital disruption.
SPEAKER_01No, the real revolution is incredibly quiet.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It is about taking brilliant, lightning-fast blockchain technology and burying it deep in the background.
SPEAKER_01Right. It is about using strict traditional regulation like Sharia compliance to legitimize that technology.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell And using it to solve the painfully boring but vital everyday friction of moving value safely across borders.
SPEAKER_01For any of you listening, whether you are a supply chain manager paying vendors across three different continents or just someone trying to send money overseas to your family.
SPEAKER_00This strategy of prioritizing quiet consistency over loud hype will dictate the financial tools you adopt in the coming decade.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. The most successful financial platforms will be the ones that make the friction of money movement completely disappear from your view.
SPEAKER_00Disappear entirely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And consider the implications of that kind of disappearance.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01If the most advanced, complex blockchain technologies, the exact systems generating endless headlines and debates today, are ultimately destined to become completely invisible to the end user, quietly operating behind the scenes of asset-backed, zero infinite accounts. Wow. What other loud, highly debated, disruptive technologies currently dominating our news cycles are simply waiting to vanish into the mundane background plumbing of our everyday lives?
SPEAKER_00That is a staggering question to consider, especially when you look at how much energy we spend tracking the hype of new tech rather than waiting for it to actually become seamlessly useful.
SPEAKER_01It really puts things in perspective.
SPEAKER_00It does. Our goal today was to explore how the chaotic maze of international banking is being transformed into a seamless solid vault. And finding out that the secret is just hiding the cutting of tech behind ancient rules is exactly why we do these deep dives.
SPEAKER_01Keep questioning the world around you. Keep looking for the invisible plumbing, making everything work, and we will catch you next time.