Nium CEO: Stablecoins' real value is fixing trapped cash

Key Takeaways

• Nium CEO argues stablecoins solve treasury visibility, not payments
• Global companies can't see their spendable dollar liquidity in real time
• Stablecoins must hide blockchain complexity to win corporate treasurers

Nium CEO Prajit Nanu has a contrarian take on stablecoins: the real opportunity isn't cheaper payments. It's solving a visibility problem that plagues every multinational company. Ask a corporate treasurer how many usable dollars the company has right now, across every account worldwide. The honest answer is usually a pause, then a guess.

Nium, the Singapore-based global payments platform, maintains hundreds of bank accounts across roughly 65 to 70 countries. Even a company built specifically for cross-border money movement can't see all its dollars continuously. If Nium struggles with this, most multinationals have no chance.

What problem do stablecoins actually solve?

For most of their short life, stablecoins have been pitched as everything: cheaper remittance rails, faster payments, replacements for bank deposits, plumbing for an entirely new financial system. The problem with selling something as a fix for everything? It starts sounding like a fix for nothing.

"Today, stablecoins are like a drug trying to treat 20 different problems," Nanu said in an interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. He's betting on a narrower use case. Not consumer payments. Not remittances. Treasury settlement.

“Where we think stablecoin has the biggest value is as a treasury layer across all the entities, where I can move money instantly among my entities.”

— Prajit Nanu, CEO of Nium

The pitch works like this: a company collects Brazilian reais during business hours, parks the value in a dollar-backed stablecoin overnight, then flips it back to reais before the shop opens tomorrow. In that window, the company earns yield, sidesteps some currency-slide risk, and finally sees its dollar liquidity across every entity at once.

Why treasurers resist the pitch

"The certainty that is promised has a lot of uncertainty associated with making that decision," Webster observed. That tension defines the sales challenge. Stablecoins are selling certainty to the very people whose job is to stamp out uncertainty. The product only wins if it removes more doubt than it creates.

Nanu said that sets a high bar for providers. Corporate customers shouldn't have to pick a blockchain, babysit token balances, or calculate gas fees. They want a defined financial outcome. The provider absorbs the complexity.

"The treasurers really care about: Is my money safe? Is this in a regulated setup? Is this fast? Is this low cost? What's the yield?" Nanu said. "These are very simple questions." Start answering them with gas fees, competing chains, and transaction costs that drift, and the conversation dies. "Boom, you've lost the treasurer."

The stakes are personal. CFOs and treasurers risk their jobs if something goes wrong. The paradox: stablecoins may only become useful to enterprises once they stop feeling like stablecoins at all.

How does this compare to bank treasury pooling?

The "treasury layer" idea looks a lot like multicurrency notional pooling, a service banks already offer. Companies manage balances across accounts and currencies without physically moving every dollar. But pooling works best in major currencies and mature markets. Step outside that zone, and coverage turns patchy.

Big banks excel in dollars, euros, and pounds. In emerging markets, they rely more on correspondent banks and inherited systems that don't always talk to each other. That gap is where Nanu sees stablecoins fitting in. They could bridge the coverage holes that banks leave open.

What would a stablecoin treasury stack look like?

Nanu's vision requires providers to build abstraction layers thick enough that treasurers never touch the blockchain. The interface should feel like a bank portal: show balances, show yields, show movement history. The rails underneath, whether Ethereum, Solana, or something proprietary, stay invisible.

That's easier said than built. Today's stablecoin infrastructure still exposes too much plumbing. Wallet management, chain selection, and fee volatility all surface to the user. Winning the corporate treasury use case means solving UX problems that consumer crypto never bothered with.

Where this leaves enterprise crypto adoption

Nanu's framing shifts stablecoins from a payments story to a treasury story. That's a smaller addressable market but a more defensible one. Payments face regulatory scrutiny, consumer trust issues, and entrenched competition from card networks. Treasury operations involve fewer counterparties and clearer ROI calculations.

The question is whether stablecoin providers can meet corporate standards for security, auditability, and regulatory compliance before the window closes. Banks aren't standing still. They're building faster rails and better APIs. If they solve the emerging-market coverage problem first, the stablecoin wedge disappears.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is trapped cash in corporate treasury?

Trapped cash refers to funds that exist across a company's global accounts but can't be quickly accessed or deployed because treasurers lack real-time visibility across all entities and currencies.

How could stablecoins help corporate treasurers?

Stablecoins could serve as a settlement layer that lets companies move value instantly between entities, see consolidated dollar liquidity in real time, and earn yield on idle balances overnight.

Why do treasurers resist stablecoins?

Treasurers are paid to eliminate uncertainty. Stablecoins introduce new risks around blockchain complexity, regulatory status, and operational unfamiliarity that can outweigh the promised benefits.

How do stablecoins compare to bank notional pooling?

Bank pooling works well for major currencies but has gaps in emerging markets. Stablecoins could theoretically offer broader coverage, but lack the regulatory clarity and enterprise-grade UX that banks provide.

Source: PYMNTS | / PYMNTS