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José Fernandez Da Ponte, a key Stellar figure, discusses why payments is becoming a compelling use case in LATAM fintech. The ecosystem is moving beyond hype cycles to infrastructure-first thinking: companies like Etherfuse, Félix, and Meru are building on Stellar not to sell crypto, but to solve real financial problems at scale. Distribution wins when 80% of users don't know they're using blockchain.

Bermuda's government announced it will move its national economy on-chain using the Stellar network, becoming the world's first fully on-chain national economy. The government approved digital asset acceptance and investment policies, and will modify its FinTech Development Fund to support the ecosystem.

Kaan from the Stellar Development Foundation presents Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), explaining its two modes (charge and channel) for monetizing services on Stellar. MPP enables pay-per-request billing and high-frequency micropayments for agents and services, with a live demo showing how to implement paywalls for premium MCP tools.

Stellar Development Foundation Q1 2026 webinar highlights record growth: on-chain RWAs surpassed $2 billion (3x quarter-over-quarter), payment volume reached $5.5 billion (up 72% YoY), and the network now supports 10.6 million unique addresses with 99.99% uptime. Major institutions including U.S. Bank, Amundi, and Societe Generale are deploying regulated products on Stellar.

Two Stellar ecosystem projects, ArcusX and SoZu Pay, were awarded the InstaWords Award for a four-week sprint. ArcusX is building a freelance marketplace on Stellar to reduce fees and payment delays in Latin America, while SoZu Pay is developing NGO disbursement infrastructure using stablecoins and the Stellar Disbursement Platform.

A panel discussion on crypto's 2026 outlook featuring leaders from Stellar, KuCoin, Fidelity, and fintech startups. Topics covered agentic payments, tokenized real-world assets, stablecoin regulation, institutional adoption, and the need for regulatory clarity.

Stellar Developers meeting covering Q1 2026 ecosystem metrics showing 2B RWA market cap and 170M DeFi TVL, MoneyGram partnership expansion to El Salvador, Aquarius hitting 50M TVL, and 260 hackathon projects including AI agents, mobile wallets, and security tools.

Stellar House CDMX brought together builders, regulators, and institutions across Latin America to discuss stablecoins, financial infrastructure, and blockchain adoption. Key themes included cross-border payments, regulatory clarity, privacy as institutional adoption driver, and local stablecoin opportunities.

Tomer Weller, CPO at Stellar Development Foundation, discusses configurable privacy as the key to institutional blockchain adoption. Privacy pools and confidential tokens enable selective data protection while preserving transparency, with implementations like Stellar Private Payments now live and expected institutional adoption in 2026.

Stanford researcher Lisa Nestor analyzed 41 million USDC transactions on Airtm to measure stablecoin performance in cross-border payments. The data shows 96% settlement within one hour, competitive fees for micropayments, and strong evidence that open networks deliver better outcomes than closed systems.

Arnald from Quantos Payments discusses their regulated e-money and stablecoin platform built on public blockchains. The Dutch-regulated fintech focuses on solving cross-border B2B settlement costs and liquidity challenges for corporates, platforms, and AI agents, recently becoming a Visa principal member.

MoneyGram CEO Anthony Suhu discusses modernizing the 80-year-old remittance company by integrating blockchain rails, stablecoins, and APIs to create instant, borderless payments. He emphasizes omni-channel strategy, customer choice, and open interoperable systems while maintaining regulatory compliance.