Senior Nanny

In the early years, companies relied on check delays for arbitrage. Today, stablecoins and blockchain optimize cross-border payments and collateral circulation, but manual risk control remains indispensable.

Written by: Thejaswini M A

Compiled by: Block unicorn

In the 1970s, American companies hired consultants to slow down cash flow.

This was known as remote payment. To delay payments, buyers in New Jersey would write a check from an obscure bank in Montana, thousands of miles away.

Due to the distance and additional handoff steps between banks, it took days for the check to clear. With interest rates soaring above 10%, keeping the money in the account for a few extra days could yield unexpected profits.

Some consultants maintained maps to record which small-town banks had the longest clearing times. It was the massive transaction volume that made this model work. In 1970, Americans wrote 8 billion checks, which doubled to 16 billion by 1980. The Federal Reserve's floating funds, which existed simultaneously in two places due to checks being deposited but not yet cashed, averaged about $3 billion daily in 1972. This number more than doubled between 1975 and 1978.

The Federal Reserve was furious about this. In February 1979, it released a report on remote payments, followed by a policy statement requiring banks to stop assisting such operations. The Monetary Control Act of 1980 mandated the complete abolition of this practice. Twenty years later, the 21st Century Check Act finally ended this situation. Today, most checks can clear within one business day, with all checks processed in a building in Atlanta by the Federal Reserve. Thus, it all came to an end.

Siemens has over 12,000 employees in more than 80 countries, with its global business services department responsible for handling invoices, running payroll, and reconciling accounts. Airbus established an office in Lisbon in July 2021 and currently has over 1,000 employees at this center and its industrial sector in Portugal. Goldman Sachs has a total workforce of 47,400.

Then, in September 2024, Siemens issued €300 million in bonds and completed the settlement via blockchain in just minutes.

Today, I want to show you the connection between these two facts. Let’s get started...

Let’s start with bonds, as they are the easiest

In February 2023, Siemens issued €60 million on the Polygon platform and waited two days for the transaction to settle. Eighteen months later, Siemens issued €300 million again, converting public crypto network SWIAT into SWIAT. SWIAT, built by a consortium of several European banks, is a closed ledger specifically designed for transactions that comply with institutional rules. This regulatory fit allowed it to connect to the trigger solution of the German Federal Bank, enabling the automatic settlement of the entire €300 million in just minutes using central bank currency.

Investors subscribed directly and saw their registration information immediately after the settlement was completed. Peter Lasgub, the company’s CFO, was responsible for both issuances, with the second issuance nearly eliminating all settlement risks for the parties involved.

Typically, institutions like Clearstream (a large central securities depository) must intervene to handle such securities certificates. No employee at Clearstream would lose their job over a German bond.

Next is the payroll department

Deel provides payroll management services for over 40,000 companies and 1.5 million employees across more than 150 countries, processing over $22 billion annually. Starting January 2026, companies can directly use stablecoin vaults to pay all their global payrolls. In June 2026, Deel launched its dollar-backed digital balance DLUSD.

What challenges do employers face? Idle liquidity stuck in overseas bank accounts. Emergency troubleshooting after failed remittances. Exchange fees from forex intermediaries. Manual account reconciliation.

What’s in it for workers? In Argentina, Turkey, and Ukraine, wages paid in local currency can depreciate by 20% to 40% within a year. In 2025, 85% of Deel’s contractors in Argentina chose to receive their wages in dollars. In June of this year, the company provided them with a dollar balance in their already used applications (built on the Bridge, Privy, and Tempo platforms) and offered rewards for idle funds. In May of this year, the company began paying full-time employees in the U.S. and Eurozone with stablecoins issued on the Polygon platform, amounting to 10% to 25% of their net wages after tax.

From a financial perspective, the practicality of stablecoins is now backed by solid data. A joint survey by EY and Patton on 350 corporate executives showed that 13% of companies have adopted stablecoins. Among them, 41% achieved over 10% cost reduction in cross-border B2B payments. This efficiency improvement saved $5 million in a $50 million transfer project, which had previously been counted as fixed operating costs. Looking ahead, 54% of non-users surveyed plan to adopt this infrastructure within a year.

By February 2026, the actual payment amount of end-user stablecoins is expected to reach approximately $390 billion annually, doubling from 2024, with about 60% being B2B transactions rather than simple transactions. Modern credit cards (Hyundai Card) completed a cross-border corporate payment in just 7 minutes. Visa's annual settlement amount on nine stablecoin chains reached $7 billion, growing by 50% in a single quarter. These are not just marginal experiments by cryptocurrency companies.

Companies are using stablecoins to address the technical issues of slow cross-border settlements and trapped funds discussed earlier.

The third and largest, least mentioned aspect—collateral

JPMorgan's Kinexys processes about $5 billion in transactions daily, with a cumulative clearing volume of $30 trillion, and intraday repurchase transactions exceeding $1.75 trillion. BlackRock has delivered tokenized money market funds as collateral for derivatives to Barclays Bank. Broadridge processes $354 billion in transactions daily. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is collaborating with Google Cloud to build a similar system, aiming to create a collateral market worth $15 trillion.

I want to explain why collateral is something to focus on if you are building a house.

A hedge fund holds a position it is unwilling to sell and wants to use it as collateral for borrowing. Due to mutual distrust, the collateral is held by a third-party agent in the middle. Someone is responsible for negotiating the agent's contract in advance. Then, the asset circulates for several days, accumulating costs.

Semi-liquid assets ensure the original safety of the collateral and change how borrowers use it. It can freeze the collateral, adjust spending conditions, and even skip transfers. Just like Kinexys, its valuation also reaches $15 trillion. Look at which jobs have been retained after the widespread adoption of software; the logistics of transferring collateral have disappeared, leaving only the tricky human judgments of assessing asset value and making default decisions late at night. This is the advice I would give to anyone deciding on budget directions.

This means that technology cannot eliminate the costs of misjudging trading partners. It also explains why some projects succeed while others fail.

Between 2018 and 2020, several large companies, including HSBC, Maersk, and BNP Paribas, launched four trade finance blockchain networks. But none of them survived past 2023.

• June 2022 - we.trade went bankrupt.
• November 2022 - Maersk and IBM shut down TradeLens.
• Early 2023 - Marco Polo Restaurant closed, with debts of $4.6 million.
• November 2023 - Contour closed after averaging only 60 to 70 transactions per month (later acquired by XDC Network).

Faster electronic letters of credit improve document processing speed without affecting the core costs of credit underwriting.

Komgo is the only survivor among this group of companies. It has made it to today because it abandoned blockchain technology. Komgo was launched by several large banks in 2018, initially offering digital letters of credit and document workflow tools. The letter of credit product ultimately failed, while the paper document product continued to operate. While competitors tried to digitize trust and failed, Komgo survived by completely transforming and focusing on mechanical pipeline business.

Tether demonstrated what happens when a financial company refuses to assess trading partners. It plays a purely mechanical pipeline role, receiving dollars, holding government bonds, and issuing tokens, while actual customer transactions are handled by exchanges, eliminating operational costs associated with human trust. This fully automated asset transfer model allowed a team of 300 people to achieve $10.9 billion in profits by 2025. Tether's employees earned an average of $33.6 million each, far exceeding traditional risk management banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.

Subsequently, the company began to venture into the credit field. Its secured loans increased from $14.6 billion on September 30 to $17.04 billion on December 31, adding nearly $7 billion in six months. Although the identities of the borrowers are confidential, these loans are backed by a safety net of $6.34 billion.

When Tether began lending again, it had to hire personnel to assess collateral and conduct late-night margin calls.

Two details severely distort Tether's profitability. First, nearly half of its profits come solely from the soaring prices of its massive gold and Bitcoin reserves. Second, the tokens it issues worth billions of dollars do not require any interest payments. If a traditional bank held such a massive amount of customer funds, it would need to pay billions of dollars in interest annually.

Circle also showcases the same boundaries from another side. According to its 10-K report, the company expects its distribution costs related to Coinbase to reach $1.4 billion in 2025, up from the previous $924.5 million. This means that 51% of its $2.7 billion revenue flows to Coinbase, a company that neither issues USDC nor manages reserves. Coinbase is responsible for user registration, KYC processes, and anti-fraud teams. Verifying customer identities still requires human judgment. Circle reduces its workforce by completely outsourcing this process, turning what should have been counted as internal payroll expenses into an external contract expense.

So, where to build?

Enterprise blockchain and stablecoin technology solve three major operational challenges. They automate the flow of cash, collateral, and certificates; release idle funds that were previously trapped in payroll floats and custodial accounts; and eliminate cross-border friction in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia—which is key to the reported 10% cost reductions by executives.

Corporate bond issuance is almost overlooked. Germany's eWpG project enabled Siemens to successfully issue bonds. As of June 2024, the total issuance of eWpG digital securities was approximately €236 million, with the German Reconstruction Credit Bank (KfW) issuing €150 million through two transactions. However, this does not affect the prosperity of the European corporate bond market.

In the past, CFOs profited from delayed settlements. With floating rates disappearing, they turned to managing pre-funded accounts. Today, tokenization has completely changed this situation.