I recently spoke with an entrepreneur who had just made a big life move: leaving the UK to settle in Argentina. The logistics were complex, but everything was falling into place until the moment came to pay his child’s school fees. He spent days trying to find a reliable solution before finally paying… in stablecoins. Not because he’s a crypto enthusiast. But because nothing else worked.
This real-life situation captures something deeper that I keep observing, day after day, in my conversations with founders. More and more people today live lives that are fundamentally transnational: families split across continents, dual residences, international schools, cross-border teams, operational bases in Latin America, part-time lives in Lisbon, Paris, Singapore. And yet, the moment money has to move across borders, friction shows up.
Sometimes it’s subtle (unexpected fees, slow settlement). Other times, it’s more complicated (failed transactions, blocked cards, opaque FX rates, compliance delays that stall entire operations).
As long as you operate within the usual “rails” – EUR to USD, GBP to EUR, everything runs relatively smoothly. But the second you need to step outside those rails, the entire system becomes costly and deeply frustrating. Now imagine scaling this challenge at the business level. You start sourcing talent in Latin America, you open new supply chains in Africa or you want to enter a formerly sanctioned market that just reopened. Suddenly, you’re navigating high interbank fees, volatile settlement times and a lack of visibility on when payments will be cleared or even if they’ll be received.
And this is exactly why something exciting is happening beneath the surface. A new financial layer is emerging, one that doesn’t try to patch old rails, but rather to reimagine how we move value. Stablecoins, programmable blockchains: these technologies offer radically different ways to transfer and govern money across borders. They are faster and cheaper (and inherently programmable).
But here’s the caveat. If we want this infrastructure to truly serve the majority (and not just the few who are technically fluent) we must shift the way we design and regulate financial systems.
“We need a new quality of dialogue between regulators and builders”
We need interfaces and user experiences that are truly intuitive and grounded in the realities that users and businesses face when operating cross-border and regulatory frameworks that are anchored in actual usage, not abstract theory. And, most importantly, we need a new quality of dialogue between regulators and builders.
This is not about replacing Banks, it’s about building a more inclusive and flexible financial infrastructure. If we want systems that work, we must start from the use cases: not the legacy. That means spending time with entrepreneurs and designing around what is already happening on the ground. Because at this point, what’s being built at the edge may very well become the new core.
This article was published in the 7th edition of Forbes Luxembourg.
Read more articles:
Luxembourg’s Tax System Goes Digital: From Paper Trails To Pre-Filled Returns
Talk Forbes x B17: Luxembourg, A Pioneer In Regulated Digital Finance
