Santi Alvarado (XFX) on Improving FX for Stablecoins (EP.635)

The global foreign exchange market moves $7.5 trillion daily, yet remains plagued by inefficiencies, high capital costs, and opaque settlement processes. Traditional cross-border payments rely on the SWIFT messaging system and extensive Nostro/Vostro account pre-funding, which ties up trillions in capital. XFX addresses these friction points by providing financial infrastructure that leverages stablecoins to enable real-time, programmatic settlement. By bypassing legacy banking rails, the platform eliminates the need for pre-funding and offers transparent, consistent liquidity for institutional clients. Santi Alvarado, CEO and co-founder of XFX, highlights that while digital remitters have improved the user experience, the underlying settlement layer remains stuck in batch-processed, analog workflows. XFX seeks to modernize this value chain, starting with USD, USDC, and USDT pairs against the Mexican peso, to facilitate faster, more efficient international capital movement.