An early example of blockchain tech already in the mainstream is @terra_money.

For those not in the know, it has touched 1,100,000+ users and processed ~$104 mn in payments in South Korea.

What does it do?

To Indians, this may not be new, but is a big deal in other countries.

It is essentially fintech infra for a `wallet`, that bypasses Visa and Mastercard payment rails.

Examples of these in India are Paytm, Freecharge, etc. - but of course all beaten down by the ubiquitous UPI.

The difference between the backends of these and Terra is key though.

Most wallet backends are run off a database owned by the wallet provider.

Terra uses a Cosmos-based blockchain to run it's payment ledger. Although Terra's blockchain is run by a consortium, it serves to showcase the capabilities of what can be done with a public blockchain.

The main benefit for merchants is the reduced transaction fee on consumer payments.

South Korea has a reasonable crypto-regulation scene. You can convert between the Korean won and the Terra stablecoin (denominated against the Korean won and USD) with minimal fees.

This allows merchants to convert their Terra stablecoin receipts into Korean won or USD instantly.

Reduced time to get cash on hand is a big plus in retail.

@terra_money founders come from an ecommerce background, and hence the targeted use of crypto in this emerging use case.

If it's not clear from the above discussion, whenever you use Paytm or Freecharge or Venmo, you are already using a sort of USD or INR token (aka a stablecoin - google DAI, USDT for more details).

It just gets stored on a company's database. Tokenization is not a new thing.

Another example of an attempt to use crypto to build financial rails is @SilaMoney.

They are building a suite of digital payment APIs in the US, but their ACH use case is very interesting.

They are using an ERC20 token on Ethereum to settle transactions between bank accounts.

For those not in the know, ACH payments still take 2 days to settle. Ethereum transactions take ~1-3 minutes to settle.

When it launches, @maticnetwork will make settlements even faster and cheaper.

But even doing this on Ethereum is a good improvement on the ACH as it is now.

Another startup I am watching from afar is @bankonjuno.

The team already has @getnuo in their stable, which is a trustless or might I say "trust-worthy" way to lend and borrow funds from a smart contract on the blockchain.

By the way, smart contracts are essentially programs that are radically transparent about what they are programmed to do.

Coupled with the ability to lock assets programatically, they provide a really interesting way to design fintech infra.

Programmable money has been a recurring theme for blockchains.

If @SilaMoney succeeds in solving for ACH, they can apply simple programmable tidbits to payment flows as they exist today.

It's not very evident, but even today, a problem like automating salary payments to employees every month is not easy to do.

Delve deeper into the state of current fintech infra, and this and a lot of stuff becomes painfully clear.

Getting back to @bankonjuno, what I especially like is their frontend approach.

The Juno frontend is that of a neo-bank in the US, including a mobile-first, cards and all the associated bells and whistles.

What I am interested though is how deep their integration will be with @getnuo or other lending protocols on Ethereum or other blockchains.

Essentially the major differentiator a neo-bank can take is either UX/UI or simply product design, niche specialisation or cost of funds.

Juno seems to be taking the "higher interest rate" narrative.

This is something all fintech cos deal with if they are handling the cash flow. Banks are best at this, followed by NBFCs with a higher cost of capital.

Does crypto provide a way to get lower cost of capital?

Frankly I don't know. I am excited to see what happens though.

Juno is taking a smart approach to take on the bank frontend or neo-bank narrative.

Will be interesting to see how it plays out on their backend.