USDC Treasury Protection for LatAm SMEs
Fernando Sandoval, co-founder of Kapital, on stablecoins for cross-border payments
The real signal is that dollar access is not a nice to have for LatAm SMEs, it is an immediate treasury need that banks have failed to solve. Kapital is winning adoption by turning something that normally requires bank relationships, FX desks, or offshore accounts into a default onboarding feature. A business can park operating cash in local currency, shift part of it into USDC, and spend from that balance with a card, which makes dollar protection usable on day one.
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This demand is tied to day to day survival, not crypto speculation. Fernando Sandoval describes local currencies moving sharply against the dollar, and positions USDC as a way for companies to protect treasury balances while still operating through the same Kapital account and card workflow.
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The closest U.S. parallel is the post SVB treasury scramble at Mercury, Brex, Rho, and newer cash management tools. In the U.S., startups wanted FDIC coverage and yield. In LatAm, the more urgent problem is preserving value in dollars, so the treasury product naturally centers on stablecoins instead.
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The product also feeds Kapital's broader model. Stablecoins make the account more valuable, then Kapital layers on cards, lending, and Flex, its supplier financing product. That helps explain why the company scaled to $184M in annualized revenue in 2024 while expanding deposits and payment volume across the platform.
The next step is for dollar access to become table stakes across emerging market business banking. As regulation hardens and more banks add stablecoin rails, the advantage will shift from simply offering USDC to bundling it with lending, payables, and cross border vendor payments, where Kapital already has a head start.