Translation Layer Between Stablecoins and Banks
Farooq Malik and Charles Naut, co-founders of Rain, on stablecoin-backed credit cards
Rain is not really building a better corporate card, it is building the translation layer between on chain dollars and the old banking system. The core problem is simple, crypto native businesses can hold revenue in wallets and move money instantly on chain, but still need to pay AWS, airlines, employees, and vendors that run on card networks, ACH, wires, and local bank transfers. Rain started with cards because that gave it a live payments wedge, but the deeper asset is the authorization, settlement, and repayment infrastructure underneath.
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Brex and Ramp use cards to win the finance team, then add software like bill pay, travel, and expense controls. Rain is aiming one layer lower. It wants any fintech or spend product to plug into stablecoin balances and move between wallet collateral, card spend, ACH, wire, and reimbursement flows without forcing a business to fully off ramp first.
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The product design shows why this infrastructure has to be rebuilt. Each customer gets its own smart contract, keeps control of the tokens, posts stablecoins as collateral, spends on a credit line, then can repay by wallet, ACH, wire, check, or by using the posted collateral. That is very different from a normal card program tied to a bank deposit account.
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This fits a broader stablecoin pattern. Related work on stablecoin payments describes startups like Rain and Layer2 Financial as giving neobanks and processors a way to offer instant transfers, cross border payments, and dollar access on new rails. More recent work on Rain also shows the company expanding from its own card into underlying settlement and authorization technology for others.
If digital dollars keep spreading from crypto native treasuries into mainstream business payments, the winners will be the companies that make stablecoin balances usable everywhere a business already spends and gets paid. That points Rain toward becoming background infrastructure, where cards are only the first interface and the larger opportunity is powering bill pay, payroll, and embedded finance across both wallet and bank based money.