Beam and Braid to offer stablecoins to smaller banks

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As regulation becomes clearer and the number of national banks rumored to have stablecoin plans grow, it seems like much of America’s financial sector is coming to grips with a future involving stables. But compared to these well-heeled and technically-savvy TradFi institutions, local banks and credit unions — where a sizable percentage of Americans do their banking — are almost certain to lag behind in this trend.

To help narrow this gap, Beam and Braid are partnering to offer stablecoin infrastructure to community banks and credit unions in the US, Lightspeed has learned exclusively.

The program will open with seven partner banks across the American northeast and midwest, Beam founder and CEO Dan Mottice told me. At a basic level, Braid offers a set of APIs that allow smaller banks to modernize their product lines — like adding real time payments or new card network capabilities, for instance — and Beam is providing the stablecoin-specific infrastructure.

In exchange for these capabilities, the banks will pay a licensing fee plus transaction fees on the stablecoin flows, a Beam representative said.

Mottice, who was previously product lead for Visa’s crypto arm, founded Beam in 2022. Under the prior SEC regime, the stablecoin company primarily conducted business outside of the United States, in regions where dollar access was desirable (like Latin America and Africa).

When the crypto-friendly Trump administration came to office, Mottice and Co. began trying to pre-empt new US-based market opportunities that might emerge, Mottice told me. One segment that came to mind was community banks, many of which feel like they missed out on the fintech wave of the 2010s and may be keen on becoming early adopters of a newer financial innovation in stablecoins. This is especially important as these banks’ depositor bases age, and as sthey face the task of courting younger, more-online customers. 

Banks with under $500 million in assets under management will be given access to a Braid innovation sandbox that unlocks access to faster payouts, cross-border transactions and modern wallet experiences, according to a blog post from Beam that was viewed by Lightspeed.

For banks with more than half a billion in AUM, Beam and Braid can offer more direct integration and the capacity for enterprise-scale stablecoin products. Mottice added that Beam has begun to have conversations about white-label stablecoin issuance on behalf of banks, although those talks are still in their early stages.

The product will primarily run on Solana, Mottice said, which he cast as more of a “backend network choice” than as a pitch to the banks themselves, who primarily care about speed and cost but may not be as in-the-weeds about the benefits of one blockchain over another. 

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