We're also covering Monzo CEO ousted over listing fight 🇬🇧, Coinbase boss manipulating markets for fun 🇺🇸, Pakistani stablecoin kiosks 🇵🇰 & Dutch neobank Bunq entering the US 🇳🇱
The ZAR model is fascinating because they're using Visa's existing card rails to make stablecoins feel like just another mobile wallet, which removes the crypto complexity for 100 million unbanked Pakistanis. What's clever is how Timinsky and Scholl are essentialy arbitraging the difference between Pakistan's capital controls and dollar-pegged stablecoins stored on Visa cards accessible at corner stores. The expansion to Africa in 2026 makes perfect sense because those markets have similar profiles with massive unbanked populations, currency instability, and existing mobile money infrastructure that can integrate with Visa cards. If they can replicate this in Nigeria or Kenya, they're positioning themselves as the physical on-ramp for the entire global south to access dollar-denominated digital currency.
The ZAR model is fascinating because they're using Visa's existing card rails to make stablecoins feel like just another mobile wallet, which removes the crypto complexity for 100 million unbanked Pakistanis. What's clever is how Timinsky and Scholl are essentialy arbitraging the difference between Pakistan's capital controls and dollar-pegged stablecoins stored on Visa cards accessible at corner stores. The expansion to Africa in 2026 makes perfect sense because those markets have similar profiles with massive unbanked populations, currency instability, and existing mobile money infrastructure that can integrate with Visa cards. If they can replicate this in Nigeria or Kenya, they're positioning themselves as the physical on-ramp for the entire global south to access dollar-denominated digital currency.
Yes, it's interesting indeed. That is why it made it in the newsletter :)