Nium Partnered with Coinbase to Make Stablecoin Payments Global! Here's Why... | Santhosh Srinivasan

**Santhosh Srinivasan** (0:00)
I think where there is still work to be done is, how is that stable actually becoming spendable in the real world? Can you walk into a coffee shop and start paying for your coffee with a stablecoin? That's where we also recently announced a stablecoin back card to again help try to break the taboo a little bit. Because we have direct issuing licenses with like Visa and MasterCard across multiple geographies and entities and locations today.

**Tony Edward** (0:30)
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Hey everyone, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm Tony Edward.

**Amanda Wickroft** (2:41)
And I'm Amanda Wickroft.

**Tony Edward** (2:43)
And joining us is Santosh Srinivasan, who's the VP of Treasury at Nium, which provides global infrastructure for real-time cross-border payments. Santosh, great to have you.

**Santhosh Srinivasan** (2:55)
Thanks, Tony. And hey, Amanda, nice to meet you both.

**Tony Edward** (2:58)
Yeah, Santosh, Amanda and I are excited to chat with you. Nium doing some incredible things with stable coins and integrating into your payment system. So we're excited to dive into the details, but let's kick it off with your background. Tell us about where you're from and how do you make your way into the payments world?

**Santhosh Srinivasan** (3:13)
Yes, absolutely. So I was born in India, and then I moved over to the UK roughly around 2011 So I think while I was in university, the whole banking crisis and whatnot happened. And to be honest, that was my first introduction to finance. I was like, what is all this market crash and like Lehman crisis that everyone was talking about? Like, you know, so it got me curious. So I was in engineering doing a completely different field in biotechnology, but then somehow the world of finance attracted me and all the headlines that it was getting into.
It made me quite inquisitive and I started digging more and more. And I found that world to be fascinating, to be honest.
And what I realized with finance is probably the closest that comes to the real life that you lead. Like, you know, everything that you touch has an impact on finance. The goods you buy, the car you travel, like how much you pay for your mortgage. Like, you know, every aspect of your life is baked into how the finance world is constructed. So I felt it's a lot more real and it's a lot more relatable to what I was doing, right? So, and plus, it was something that kept my intellectual side challenging all the time. Like, you know, there is always new things to learn about, new things to carry on and whatnot. So I moved over to the UK right after my engineering to pursue a master's in finance at Imperial College in London. And then I started off my career as an investment banker with Barclays in London. I did a couple of roles, but then I majorly did trading of like, you know, trading effects and interest rate products within Barclays, managing both the asset side and the liability side for Barclays. Then the world of fintech started to take shape, right? So, and I was one of the earlier doctors and I was very curious to say why the finance system has always functioned the way how it functioned like it always did, right? For example, I was an immigrant in the UK and I wanted to send money back home, right? Simple task. The proposition is very simple. So, I walked over to my bank, I won't name which bank it is, like, you know, I walked over to my bank and I said, hey, I want to send about 1,000 pounds back home for like, you know, for any purposes or whatever. And then they said, oh, that's great. So, we're going to charge you 25 pounds for this transaction and it's going to take about seven days to happen, right? And I said, why is it taking so long? And he says, like, that's how it is, right? And here we were in the middle of a tech evolution where, like, you know, phones were becoming smarter and better. And then you have automobiles getting towards the EV side. Every industry was going through a disruption, whereas finance at that time felt like, you know, it was overdue a disruption at that point, right? And that's the time when companies like the Lights of WISE and whatnot started to come into picture. And then they said, hey, we can actually make your money transfer happen from point A to point B in the fraction of an hour, and we'll do it at a fraction of the price that the high street banks are quoting you. I thought initially this was just magic, right? So I was very curious again, and I was drawn into what these guys are building, like, you know, what is it that's going on under the hood? So I would say I was one of the really early adopters for, like, you know, when WISE hit the market.