Agora bets that white-labeling stablecoins will spur enterprise adoption

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Stablecoins today are primarily used by individuals looking for yield or as a safe-haven asset to hedge against crypto market volatility, or curious businesses wanting to improve their tech stacks.

While major institutional and fintechs are eying stablecoin integrations, that’s not stopping companies like Agora from targeting alternative enterprise use cases, its co-founder and CEO, Nick van Eck, shared on Token Relations’ Talking Tokens podcast. 

Agora is banking on stablecoins to create a new financial fabric, targeting enterprise use cases such as treasury management, cross-border payroll, B2B payments, trade finance, and global supplier settlements. 

“Most people are operating on fiat systems or siloed systems,” van Eck said. “Stablecoins really are 100 times better at moving money.”

But simply inserting stablecoins into existing corporate workflows does not solve the deeper problems for most teams. 

For example, Agora is talking to a specific company that has a treasury that moves tens of millions of dollars a month from their bank in the U.S. to a country in Asia. Creating a design that resolves the whole process – and allows such companies to remain onchain – can change the game, van Eck said. 

Van Eck believes that within five years, most users will not know, or care, which stablecoin powers their transaction, as he thinks the infrastructure layer will become invisible. Like with Venmo or Zelle, users rarely think about how transactions are settled behind the scenes; they just care that the money arrives quickly and cheaply (or for free.) 

And over time, a lot of that stuff will get “abstracted behind the scenes,” van Eck said. That abstraction is key for enterprise adoption, and subsequently spurring the broader adoption of stablecoins, he said. 

“This is the world we’re trying to build. It’s still very early but we’ll get there.” 

Agora currently offers white-labeled stablecoins, which businesses can deploy through its infrastructure. Van Eck said this model has been attractive for teams that care more about branding and interoperability across markets, rather than setting up entirely new infrastructure under the hood. 

“A lot of these white labels are being used within enterprises for their own needs,” Van Eck noted. This has varied across loyalty programs for enterprises, gaming and consumer companies. 

While some countries have leapfrogged the U.S. in building instant domestic payments infra, cross-border transactions remain fragmented and slow, he noted. Each national payment system operates like a siloed network.

Stablecoins function as an interoperable layer that can be considered a common language between financial systems. Instead of navigating wires, correspondent banks, and settlements, companies can transact directly on shared infrastructure.

This is particularly powerful in regions like Asia, where trade finance and cross-border commerce are core economic drivers. “Traditional businesses are definitely ahead of the curve in adopting stablecoins outside the U.S., because they're just that much more valuable,” van Eck said, pointing to Hong Kong, where he’s seen several traditional finance companies using stablecoins, and traditional businesses integrating them for a variety of use cases.

In the long term, he sees stablecoins surfacing new financial opportunities that allow individuals and businesses alike to transact across digital dollars and preserve wealth without relying on their local economies. 

But such developments, as many other guests on the podcast have mentioned, will take years. The big focus for Agora going forward is to get Fortune 500 businesses to start using stablecoins in some way, van Eck said. 

“I think you're going to continue to see improvements on the product and for these stablecoin-based neobanks or retail-focused ones,” Van Eck said. “I also think new assets that are coming to market will even enhance the opportunity set.”

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

For today’s episode, I interviewed Nick van Eck, co-founder and CEO of Agora, about how the stablecoin infrastructure platform is building the financial fabric for enterprises to operate entirely onchain. Nick explains why Agora launched as a neutral horizontal player to serve enterprises beyond the USDT and USDC duopoly, and how the company's white-label model allows partners to launch branded stablecoins on top of AUSD - while sharing revenue and network effects.

He walks through the waves of stablecoin adoption from crypto governance tokens to DeFi to emerging markets, why emerging market adoption is already here due to stablecoins being 100 times better than local alternatives, and how Agora is solving payment workflows. The conversation covers how the Genius Act and Bridge acquisition accelerated Fortune 500 interest, why stablecoins export U.S. capital markets and stability to regions with high inflation and poor financial services.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 – Intro

01:23 – Why Nick started Agora to serve enterprises beyond the Tether-Circle duopoly

02:13 – Competing in waves of adoption rather than directly challenging existing players

03:37 – Focusing on net new markets: institutional assets, DeFi, and emerging markets

04:54 – Solving entire payment workflows from treasury to cross-border disbursements

06:09 – What keeps companies onchain?

08:42 – Agora's white-label business model and revenue sharing with partners

12:46 – Custody solutions for the next trillion dollars in stablecoins

18:26 – Traditional businesses adopting stablecoins faster outside the US

19:44 – Stablecoins as means for exporting U.S. capital markets to emerging markets

22:36 – Fortune 500 focus and preparing for Genius Act implementation

23:16 – Final advice: operate with integrity and play the long game

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