Stablecoins are transforming settlement — but global payments still lack a permanent identity layer. Why registries, not rails, will define the next phase of financial infrastructure.

 

 

For years, global payments have relied on a fragile but familiar architecture:

correspondent banking.

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Money moved slowly, expensively, and opaquely — hopping from local banks to international correspondents and back again. Fees stacked up at every layer, settlement took days, and reconciliation lived in spreadsheets and trust.

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That system worked because there was no real alternative.

Now there is.

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The Rise of the Stablecoin Sandwich

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A new model for global payments is emerging, often described as the “Stablecoin Sandwich.”

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The flow is simple:

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• A sender initiates a payment in fiat (for example, euros)

• An on-ramp converts fiat into a stablecoin

• The stablecoin moves across a blockchain as the settlement medium

• An off-ramp converts it back into local currency

• The recipient receives funds — often in minutes, not days

 

This hybrid model keeps compliance and regulation at the edges, while using blockchain for what it does best: fast, transparent settlement.

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The scale is no longer theoretical.

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Stablecoin transaction volumes now exceed $7 trillion annually, rivaling — and in some periods surpassing — half of Visa’s global volume. Enterprises are already using stablecoins for treasury operations, B2B settlement, and cross-border liquidity management.

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This is not a replacement of the financial system.
It’s an upgrade.

But it’s also incomplete.

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The Question Stablecoins Don’t Answer

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Stablecoins are excellent at answering one question:

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How does money move efficiently?

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They are far less equipped to answer another:

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Who is money moving to — and under what permanent, enforceable identity?

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Today’s stablecoin stack still depends on:

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• Bank accounts as identifiers

• Wallet addresses as proxies for identity

• Reversible permissions controlled by intermediaries

• Temporary credentials tied to platforms, not people or institutions

 

As volumes grow, this becomes the bottleneck.

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Settlement may happen in seconds, but identity, routing, and authority remain fragmented, revocable, and jurisdiction-dependent.

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And that’s where real value migrates next.

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The Missing Layer: Registry-Based Identity & Routing

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Every mature financial system rests on registries.

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• Land registries define property

• Corporate registries define legal entities

• IP registries define ownership

• DNS defines how the internet resolves destinations

 

Payments are no different.

At scale, money doesn’t just need rails — it needs names, namespaces, and rules.

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What’s missing from the stablecoin conversation is a sovereign, human-readable registry layer that sits above settlement rails and defines:

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• Who can receive value

• Under what identity

• With what continuity

• And under which governing framework

 

This is not about wallets.
It’s about non-revocable economic identity.

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From Wallets to Names

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Wallets are technical endpoints.
Registries create permanence.

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A human-readable, registry-based identity:

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• Survives platform changes

• Is not dependent on a single custodian

• Can route payments across rails

• Can be governed by clear, enforceable rules

 

This is why namespaces matter.

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Family names.
Brand names.

Institutional identifiers.

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Not as marketing labels — but as economic destinations.

A payment sent to family.pay, brand.commerce, or institution.bank is not just faster.
It is unambiguous, portable, and durable.

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Where Value Actually Accumulates

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As stablecoins commoditize settlement, margins compress at the rail level.

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The durable value doesn’t sit in:

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• Issuing another stablecoin

• Running another wallet

• Adding another processor

 

It accumulates in whoever controls:

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• Identity namespaces

• Routing permissions

• Registry rules

• Economic continuity

 

In other words: the layer that decides where money goes — not just how fast it gets there.

This mirrors the evolution of the internet itself.

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Bandwidth became cheap.
Names became priceless.

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Regulated Infrastructure, Not Disruption Theater

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Crucially, this next layer is not about “disrupting” banks or regulators.

It’s about abstracting complexity while preserving compliance.

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The model looks like this:

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• Banks, on-ramps, and off-ramps handle KYC/AML

• Stablecoins handle settlement

• Regulated venues handle issuance and trading

• Registries handle identity and routing

• Arbitration handles disputes and enforcement

 

Each layer does what it’s good at.

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No custody games.
No hidden float.
No shadow banking.

Just clear roles and clean interfaces.

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Why This Matters Now

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The convergence is already happening:

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• Regulated digital asset venues are aligning with enterprise blockchains

• Stablecoins are becoming treasury instruments

• Merchants of Record are being re-designed

• AI agents are beginning to transact autonomously

 

All of this requires something we don’t yet have at scale:

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A neutral, registry-based identity layer for value.

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• Not accounts.

• Not wallets.

• Names.

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The Long View

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The stablecoin sandwich is real — and it’s here to stay.

But settlement is only the middle.

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Above it sits the layer that will define the next decades of global commerce:

who owns identity, who controls routing, and who provides continuity across systems and jurisdictions.

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That layer won’t be loud.
It won’t be speculative.
And it won’t be optional.

It will be infrastructure.

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The End of Payment Processors - Why Builders Are Becoming Banks

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About the Author
 

​Stephan Schurmann, Founder & Executive Chairman of World Blockchain Bank, has worked for more than 35 years on the establishment of banks, trusts, captive insurance structures, and cross-border financial architectures across over 80 jurisdictions.

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Over that period, he encountered the same systemic failures repeatedly discussed across several online forums:

Bank licenses revoked due to political instability, residency and Golden Visa programs shut down under external pressure, and bank and payment accounts frozen or terminated without substantive cause — from traditional institutions to major payment processors.​ 

 

Rather than treating these outcomes as isolated incidents, his work focused on identifying why jurisdiction-dependent systems fail under regulatory, political, and correspondent pressure, and on designing structural alternatives that remain functional when permissions are withdrawn.

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Public discussion is intentionally limited.
Serious conversations happen privately.

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Contact: executive@worldblockchainbank.io

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