The future of banking isn’t a bank: it’ll be through your apps with stablecoins

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Many fintech and crypto apps want to operate like a bank, not with opulent lobbies, but through inclining users to keep money inside their apps and transact there without ever leaving. With the rise of stablecoin adoption and integration, that sentiment is only going to continue to increase at a global scale. 

“There’s this trend where [major fintech apps] with an audience is now rushing to be a bank,” Nikil Viswanathan, Co-Founder & CEO of Alchemy, said to me on the Talking Tokens podcast. “There’s all this money flowing through the system.” 

For example, Uber touches billions of dollars in payments, but most of that value is done through banks and processor systems. But Uber is not able to make money off that capital flowing through the system because it’s likely going through a payment processor and has to go through different regulations across states and countries. 

But Viswanathan asked, what if these frictions could be removed and build a banking-like experience?

“I can imagine this world where in the future I can have a bank account on Uber and I just keep money in there, and that's what I pay with,” Viswanathan said. “This would be an amazing business for Uber because they’d get the interest on all the money I hold, then they can give me new things like lending and borrowing and new experiences.” 

Consumer apps ranging from ridesharping to food delivery will want to operate like a bank in the future, Viswanathan said. And stablecoins could be the key ingredient here as onramps improve over time. 

As it stands, traditional currencies couldn’t provide this intermediary, as other countries outside the US wouldn’t want to implement a dollar, as it could hurt their own currency. 

But when a digital asset tied to the US dollar is available online, without any naysayers, it changes what’s possible. Instead of building country-by-country and weaving through restrictions, these stablecoin-backed payment stacks could provide instant, global settlement - and on a 24/7 availability. 

“The single biggest thing that will transform crypto is when Apple Pay starts accepting crypto,” Viswanathan said. “Then it will be crazy.”

While bitcoin could be a solution, a more popular one is US-denominated stablecoins given that it’s backed by 1:1 reserves of US dollars. “It’s like exporting the US dollar if you think about it,” Viswanathan said. 

“When you buy a stablecoin, what it does is it effectively bypasses foreign banks that would restrict citizens from just taking out US dollars, Viswanathan said. But today anyone could go on an exchange, buy stablecoins and have access to US dollars. 

“For the United States it is the best secret backdoor to exporting the US dollar.”

While the stablecoin market cap is about $300 billion, the next stage for stablecoin scale will come from consumer adoption on these consumer fintech banks that are emerging on people’s phones. 

“The thing to understand is customers won’t know they’re using stablecoins, to them it will just be US dollars,” Viswanathan said. 

“That will be how most people will get adoption to stablecoins because Grab, Gojak, Robinhood, DoorDash and Ubers are just going to let you hold your balance [on their apps,]” Viswanathan said. “But behind the scenes it will be a stablecoin.”

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

For today’s episode, I interviewed Nikil Viswanathan, Co-Founder & CEO of Alchemy, the infrastructure platform powering over 70% of top crypto applications and more than $150B in annual transaction volume. Nikil explains how Alchemy abstracted away the complexity of building onchain for millions of developers to create crypto products similar to mobile apps on iOS and web apps on AWS.

Nikil breaks down why developer adoption, not price action, is the true signal for crypto’s long-term trajectory, and why the next major wave will come from banks, fintechs, and global consumer apps integrating stablecoins and onchain payments. He shares insights from Alchemy’s work with JP Morgan, Robinhood, and web2 companies, explaining how stablecoins are becoming a new global monetary rail especially in emerging markets where inflation, capital controls, and unreliable banking systems limit economic access.

The conversation also dives into AI’s impact on software creation, the end of traditional coding careers, the rise of “makers” and why crypto and AI form a natural symbiosis. Nikil also unpacks tokenization, meme coins, DeFi’s return, hyperinflation abroad, and why stablecoins are a powerful export of the US dollar.

Talking Tokens episodes are released on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at 6AM EST or YouTube at 8AM EST every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen in!

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