RTM CEO Ruben Galindo discusses 11 years of stablecoin payments innovation, revealing that despite proven technical superiority over PayPal, the industry remains 70x smaller and faces challenges around liquidity, consumer adoption, and coordinated ecosystem efforts to scale.
In a conversation with Jose, RTM CEO Ruben Galindo reflects on a decade of building stablecoin payment infrastructure across emerging markets, remittances, and enterprise use cases. While research shows Airtium transactions meet G20 cross-border payment standards (70% under one hour, 3% exchange rates vs 6% target), stablecoin payments remain at only 72 billion annually compared to PayPal's 1.3 trillion. Galindo emphasizes the gap between blockchain transactions and fintech payments, noting that sustainable growth requires liquidity, coordinated ecosystem partnerships, targeted consumer acquisition, and significant capital investment. He argues the industry must move beyond high-risk geographies toward boring, sustainable payment use cases while competing against entrenched players like PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard.
