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Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Edward Woodford, CEO and Founder of zerohash | Episode 460
Money that waits for Monday is losing ground to rails that never sleep. Greg sits down with Edward Woodford, CEO and Founder of zerohash, to explore how stablecoins and tokenized deposits are reshaping cross-border payments, account funding, and global payouts for merchants, platforms, and marketplaces. From MIT roots to building one of the largest movers of stablecoins, Edward explains why velocity of money matters and how interoperability solves the messy reality of assets, chains, and compliance at scale.
We dig into concrete use cases: topping up trading or gaming balances instantly, paying freelancers in the Philippines or Brazil with automatic local currency conversion, and using stablecoins as a dependable 24/7 rail. Edward breaks down why abstraction is the unlock - users shouldn’t pick chains or tokens, they should just send money. He also shares why banks are poised to become the biggest on- and off-ramps as regulatory clarity lands, and why tokenized deposits may deliver stronger economics for financial institutions than issuing their own stablecoins.
Looking ahead, Edward maps a world of vertical integration, where processors launch their own networks and potentially bank charters, compressing costs and aligning incentives across the stack. He makes the case for streaming payments as a catalyst for financial resilience and agentic commerce, where instant settlement reduces payday lending and powers software-to-software transactions. The result isn’t crypto vs. traditional - it’s connected plumbing that makes payments faster, cheaper, and more inclusive.
If you care about the future of payments, cross-border commerce, and the real-world path from crypto rails to everyday use, this conversation offers a clear blueprint.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape. We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
SPEAKER_02:Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Myers, and today's special guest is Edward Woodford, the CEO and founder of Zero Hash. So, Edward, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. So before we dive into your career and the company, can you give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I grew up in the UK, as you probably tell from accent, but came here for grad school and then just never left. So started my first business that was a trade-in business, hence why I ended up in Chicago and then launched and founded Zero Hash in 2017. So I call Chicago home now.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, great. So can you walk us through maybe your professional journey and maybe how and why you started Zero Hash?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So I got into Bitcoin and blockchain in 2015. Whilst I was at MIT, there was a professor there called Christian Catalini, who was really one of the advocates very early on at MIT around thinking through this technology in a really deep way. So he launched things like giving every undergrad a Bitcoin, things like that. And so I just became fascinated about it personally. I bought my first Bitcoin actually in person at an ATM at the MIT bookstore. And kind of you go down a rabbit hole of learning about these things, but didn't enter it until 2017, after we had sold our prior business and really just started with the thesis: hey, this is a complex space from a regulatory perspective. This is a complex space from a technical perspective. And then thirdly, a lot of people self-select out of a space that in 2017 was really unknown. And there were a lot of perception issues around Bitcoin, crypto that has now obviously expanded into things like tokenization and stable coins. And so I like to play in spaces where there's this domino. The domino may fall. Sometimes the domino comes back on you. And we've definitely seen that since 2017. We've gone through some ups and downs from a regulatory perspective, for example. But I like to be in places where when the domino falls, you are the market leader, and obviously you're incredibly well positioned. So that's how we started. It was trying to solve a real problem for both startups and large companies alike. And our business has evolved to really three main pillars. But the largest is most certainly payments and leveraging stable coins and crypto more broadly as a mechanism of transferring value globally.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, let's dive deeper, tell our audience a little more about Zero Hash, maybe who your audience is, kind of the products and solutions that you offer them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So founded in 2017 and stack and payments has really evolved. And you know, I'll break it down into a couple of key products, but maybe some tangible examples that might be helpful. One of our fastest growing product lines is what we call account funding, what sometimes people in payments call AFT transactions. And effectively, here it's a me to me transfer. So this is live with groups like Calci, it's live with a number of brokerage clients, it's actually live with a number of gaming clients like DraftKings. And really the problem set that you're trying to solve is the velocity of money. How can you move value quickly, easily, seamlessly? 24-7365. And stable coins are a great mechanism of moving value in that way. And so that's our account funding product. Another really fast-growing product is what we call payouts, which is effectively live with groups like Stripe, it's live with groups like WorldPay, it's live with groups like Gusto. And here you're leveraging stable coins to, for example, send to a freelancer in the Philippines, or it's, for example, to pay a merchant more quickly. Again, you're solving the value proposition there is velocity of money, and it's velocity of money cross-border. And I think what people don't truly understand about these use cases is just the breadth of access to stable coins. People say, well, what does the what does the end person do with stable coins? Very often it just gets transferred back into dollars. So for example, I sent a colleague the other day stable coins in the Philippines. They have an account at Gcash, which is a massive, massive fintech in the Philippines. And so they receive the stablecoin and then it automatically gets converted into peso where they can spend it. Same thing in Brazil. New bank has stablecoin accounts. So when you receive stable coins, you can convert it into local currency, you can hold it, or you can even spend it in the same way. So those are two really, really fast growing payment product lines that kind of have underpinned a lot of our growth over the last few years.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. And are your customers typically the end customers, or do you work kind of through partners or both?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So our customers that we sell to are either very large merchants. So for example, a Gusto, a DraftKings, both clients in both the payouts and the account funding space. But it's also through, for example, uh PSPs and gateways, such as WorldPay, for example, Stripe, Shift 4. They're all clients of ours, Nuve. And so we have both a direct to merchant strategy as well as a partnership approach with acquirers, PSPs. In terms of the actual end customer, it really depends on the exact flow, but we always know who the end is where the money's going. That's really important from a diligent perspective, especially in stable coins, where the importance of travel rule and other compliance elements is critically important. But one of the things I like to talk about with stable coins in particular is stable coins in my mind, people don't quite appreciate how complex they are. And I say this all the time, and I don't mean this to be flippant, but this space has grown despite this being effectively an unusable technology. And what I mean by that is if I was to send you, Greg, uh stable coins today, you'd have to say, well, what stable coin do you want? Do you want USDC? Do you want USDT? Do you want RO USD? And then let's assume that we both want USDC. Well, I have USDC on Solana, and you have USDC on Ethereum. Well, that doesn't work. Those things aren't interoperable. So one of the big value propositions of what Zero Hash provides is one, interoperability. Two is technical abstraction, making it easy to move stable coins. But three, it's really about the client experience, abstracting away both the chain decision as well as the asset decision, and ensuring it's more of an account-to-account transfer. I'm sending Greg money. That's the only thing that needs to be considered. And those are the value propositions that we provide in the movement of stable coins globally.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, what do you think is the biggest challenge that your company is solving for your customers?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's complexity. So it's complexity both from a regulatory perspective. It's complex to move assets globally, especially with the nuances of how blockchains work. But actually, blockchains are an incredible way to monitor and to ensure that assets are going to good places. And it's technical complexity that is only compounding. So what I mean by that is I believe in a world where there's going to be many stable coins. You know, there's rumors of different very, very large merchants launching their own stable coins, Walmart, Amazon. So I believe in a world where there'll be a proliferation of stable coins. And Genius in the US, the Genius Act that passed last year, is certainly going to accelerate that. I also believe in a world where you're going to see expansion of chains. For example, you've seen Stripe launch tempo. So the number of assets and the number of chains are increasing. So the number of permutations that can exist in the transferability is only going to increase. So if you have a hundred stable coins across 20 chain, the number of permutations that you can have is around 4 million. So the importance of interoperability and orchestration on top of stable coins is incredibly important. So we solve both the compliance and technical complexity for our partners. And for the end user, it's around abstracting away the complexity to ensure that customers are thinking in terms of I'm moving Greg money to his Cash App account, which now just recently enabled stablecoins, from, say, for example, Edward's PayPal account, which enabled stable coins a couple of years ago. That has to be the user experience. It can't be copy alphanumeric address. Think about paying a gas fee in Ethereum. Think about interoperability because Greg is, it does Greg, Greg only has a Solana account. So those are what we solve. We call technical complexities for merchants, and we solve usability complexities for users.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So, you know, the next question is kind of around competition. And I'm sure you have some, but I feel like maybe the competition and what differentiates you is more about kind of replacing an old way of doing things with something that's faster, cheaper, easier, those kinds of things that merchants are looking for. I mean, is is that kind of what differentiates you? Because I mean, today we're moving money. It may not be easy, but we we can do it, right? So I think just curious, like what do you feel are your differentiators?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I think there's a differentiator around product that we that we offer, right? We believe that stable coins are an incredible way of moving value globally in terms of the cost, in terms of the speed, in terms of the global nature, in terms of the irreversibility, especially for merchants in particular areas. And so that is the value proposition of stable coins as a whole. Just to be clear, we don't believe in a world where 100% of every transaction will be done in stable coins, in the same way that electronic communications, there are many different ways of electronic communications. But we believe in parallels. So for example, when SMS started, you could actually only SMS people if they were on the same network as you. It's kind of similar to what you're seeing now in stable coins, where in theory, I can only send, if I have a USDC on Solana, quite challenging to create the interoperability layer to Ethereum. But as you accelerate and create interoperability across different networks and different means of transfer, including interoperability into existing mechanisms of move-in money, such as, for example, ACH, RTP, FedNow, then the growth of this as part of wallet share will increase. So we believe in a world where wallet share of stable coins will increase as a mechanism of transfer and a mechanism of payment. In terms of where Zero Hash positions ourselves, in terms of payments, we really invest in allowing partners, our target audience is the largest merchants, the largest banks, the largest payment providers in the world. And our focus is on making, allowing partners to innovate whilst not trading off trust. Sometimes in innovation, there's a perception that's a zero-sum game. I can either be innovative, but I have to take on risk. And I have to take lose trust. We really try and make that very clearly not a zero-sum game. And that's how we've really positioned ourselves to be very focused on compliance first, trusting the way that we do things, being patient, taking a multi-generational view in terms of how we build this business. And that's kind of how we've differentiated and been able to close some of the largest players in payments and traditional finance, whether that be, for example, Morgan Stanley, Interactive Brokers, Franklin Tampton, BlackRock Stripe, and others.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, let's talk about the future a little bit. Where do you see the biggest growth opportunity for this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I really believe it's cross-border. And I think what's really changing is the access to stable coins. When you think about what stable coins are, they are a network. And when people say to me, Well, what's changed in the last few years? Why has, when you look at the data on chain, stable coins now do more on-chain volume than Visa and MasterCard, right? And you know, there's a report by Artemis and lots of other people, you know, your caveat, well, it's because of people are trading and they're using stable coins to trade. Well, guess what? People use Visa Direct to fund their brokerage account as well. So I think people over-discount that people are using stable coins as a trading mechanism or to fund trading accounts. I think actually it's very important as a mechanism of value transfer. But what's changing is the access to stable coins. We are getting to a point this year in the United States whereby implementation of Genius will occur. So Genius passed last year and Congress gave one year for the rules to be written. So there's a little bit of a lag between Genius being passed and actually rollout. My view is that every bank in the United States is going to offer stable coins as a payment mechanism in and out. And the reason is that there's clarity around accessing stable coins. So the banks, they're going to be the largest on-and-off ramps into stable coins. So every single person in the United States will have access to a stable coin account if they want it. In the same way that effectively in Brazil, every Brazilian effectively has access to a stablecoin account because New Bank is so dominant and New Bank has rolled out stable coins. Secondly, where I see a huge growth lever is in tokenized deposits as a mechanism of transfer. My view is that banks are going to lean in very, very heavily into tokenized deposits in terms of what they launch as opposed to launching their own stablecoin. And I think it's largely due to the economic structure of tokenized deposits, where a fractional reserve banking structure, which will yield more for the bank than if they launched their own stablecoin. And the reason is that under Genius, stablecoin, 70% have to be backed by short-term treasuries. And the rest has to be in cash. So inherently, tokenized deposits from a yield perspective are going to be higher. So my view is that banks are going to lean in very, very heavily into tokenized deposits. And you've seen that, for example, the CEO of City, Jane, kind of spoke very publicly about her view of tokenized deposits globally and how that starts to change global remittance markets.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So specifically for your company, what does success look like maybe over the next three to five years?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, success is effectively interacting with hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. That is what success is. Whether or not they think or know about stable coins or blockchains, this technology becomes usable when people stop talking about the technology in some ways, right? Like the power of PICs in Brazil, where you've seen it go from effectively 0% to I think now 30% all wallet share in Brazil, is just the usability and scale. People in Brazil know that they're using PIX because it's got this brand profile. But I really think that when I said when most people, when they send money, probably not a lot of listeners on this space, but actual people that you don't think about how payments and money value transfer works, they will start to use this in a daily perspective when it becomes much more usable. And that's where we're very, very keen to drive that usability story forward. So for us, it's about accessing hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis, whether it be people paying merchants, paying out freelancers, funding accounts, moving tokenized deposits globally. That's kind of our North Star.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, is it fair to say that this is really sort of the plumbing behind the movement of money? Is that a fair way to look at it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're the infrastructure that is helping new ways of moving money globally. And that for us is a very sexy place to be. Sometimes plumbing is seen as uh, you know, not the most interesting place, but we sit behind some of the largest brands moving stable coins today. We are one of the largest movers of stable coins globally. Sometimes I think people that aren't in the space, they they view this world as very binary. And actually, a lot of people in my space think of the world as very binary. Hey, once you have a tokenized dollar, it always remains a tokenized dollar. I like to think of the world in a little bit more blurry terms. I don't think that when you talk about stable coins or tokenized deposits, that once you walk through that door and that dollar is tokenized, it always remains tokenized. It's when it adds value that it's tokenized, right? So, for example, my view is that in the United States, there's very few better ways of me moving you money on a Sunday morning, right? You want to fund your DraftKings account, you want to fund your CASHI account, you want to fund your interactive brokers account. You want to do it seamlessly, easily. But for me, personally, for a lot of people, it's better to hold dollars at rest, non-tokenized forms, right? And the reason is that you're not taking private credit risk, you're FDIC insured, and you can earn interest. Right now, you can't earn interest on stable coins. There's a big debate right now as to how you can give rewards to stable coin holders. So, my view on stable coins is that it's not a binary construct of tokenized versus non-tokenized. It's all about creating the plumbing, but actually making sure that that plumbing isn't completely separate from what is today. You actually got to connect the pipes between what exists today, what will exist tomorrow, and both will exist tomorrow, but the plumbing over here that we're building is going to massively increase in share. It's not only going to take share from what exists, but it's going to increase, it's actually going to create new TAM. And what I mean by that is sometimes people say, well, why does velocity of money matter? Why does cheapness of money matter? I'll give you one tangible example. It starts to change the way that we think about payments, I think, in a macro sense. Right now, you and I accept that we get paid every two weeks. And one way to think about that is actually you're providing credit to your company. Most people don't think about that. And that's okay for us, right? We're well paid, we're not worried, but a lot of the world's population, including the United States, live on edge, right? I think 70% of Americans can't afford a$1,000 shop to their budget on a monthly basis. And so that's why the construct of payday loans exists. So imagine if you make it easier and cheaper and quicker to move money. People don't need to take payday loans, right? You can even get to a construct of streaming payments. And streaming payments could be, for example, after every ride or every piece of work that people do, they get paid. And that matters to a lot of people. And then you start to take it into okay, what about the new world about agentic commerce? Streaming is going to be incredibly important. Streaming payments is going to be a huge unlock for agentic to agentic commerce. And so I think that what stable coins do is it opens up a new way of moving value, and it actually can help increase GDP because the velocity of money is really, really important in terms of creating value.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think you're you're talking about some of the things that are part of the next question, which is about trends in the industry. And obviously, stable coins is one of the hottest trends. It's part of the conversation that I have almost on a daily basis. So agentic commerce is another huge one that everyone's talking about, which if you want to call that AI or if you want to separate AI, but just curious beyond those that we've talked about, what are some of the other trends that you're seeing in payments that are really going to influence the industry?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think what we're going to see is new networks, right? And so whatever your view is on tempo, which is basically spit out of from Stripe, I think you're going to start to see groups try to vertically integrate down the payment stack. And you'll start to see interest in economics be applied where because, for example, Stripe is making money from Tempo, where, for example, they may have used a MasterCard or Visa or a Swift, they can actually effectively subsidize some of the upstream services. So it creates a really interesting dynamic, even if you're not in the space, right? If you compete with Stripe, Stripe may be able, if they are able to effectively bundle service with tempo, actually be able to compete on price much more effectively. So that's what I'm seeing is more of a vertical viewpoint around payments. Often payments, I think, is often seen as horizontal. Let's offer every APM under the sun. I actually think what you're starting to see is more vertical integration. I think you're going to see that as well, especially in the United States, given some of the macro trends from a regulatory perspective, where some of these groups will become banks themselves, right? So you'll have an acquirer potentially owning a bank. And obviously, you've seen this with Adian outside. In other parts of the world and how that affects kind of economics and affects structure. So I think in the United States you're going to see a massive form of vertical integration. I do believe, you know, stripes being public that they're going to get a bank charter. So I think that starts to fundamentally shift things. And then if you go one layer down actually to the network, that starts to change things as well. So for me, it's all about vertical integration or the attempt to vertically integrate in areas.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, a couple of final questions. If you could go back and give yourself advice at the start of your career, what would that advice be?
SPEAKER_01:I think realizing that this is a marathon, not a sprint. To build a business takes a long time. To build an important business that adds value takes even longer. I think the average exit now for founders is 14 years. You know, I'm I'm you know almost 10 years into this journey. I'm not focused on the exit per se, but you know, if you just think of it statistically, it's a long journey. And you really have to make sure that you narrow your emotional bounds. What I mean by that is to manage your emotions, both positive and negative. Because if you live every day by the positives and negatives for work, it can it, you know, it impacts your life at home. And so I think the youngest that what are the advice I'd give to myself is don't sweat some of the smaller stuff. And you know, don't overselebrate the wins. The wins are often not as big as you think, and the downs aren't often as low as you think. And I think that leads to a much healthier way of actually making decisions. I think you're actually better at business. I think you're actually just a better person by narrowing your emotional bounds. And I think, you know, I've mellowed uh over the last 10 years for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think that's that's some great advice. So, one final question. You know, what's one thing that you want the listeners from today's show to walk away from? Whether that's related to stable coins holistically or about the company, what's that one thing you want them to take away from this show?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the core is if you're thinking about this space directly, um, you know, Zero Hash is a great partner, but if you're not in thinking about the space, there are gonna be downstream repercussions, like I mentioned around vertical integration. So I think you have to start thinking about how does tokenized deposits, how do stable coins affect my broader business because everyone around you is starting to think about these things. And I do think it can create some creative destruction. I think you're gonna start to see some of that. And I think that the opportunity is massive. It can create a lot of value wherever you sit in the payment stat. And that's that's why we do what we do.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Well, Edward, thank you so much for being on the show today. I know your time's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks for having me. Love the show.
SPEAKER_02:And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast. Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpayments.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes. If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.