In Latin America, companies that buy from suppliers abroad, sell into other markets, or run regional marketplaces have long treated high fees, multi-day delays, and trapped capital as unavoidable. Traditional international wires route through correspondent banks, each taking a cut through explicit fees or hidden FX spreads, while the money sits in limbo and pre-funded accounts tie up balance sheets.

Conduit is a B2B payments network that uses stablecoins for the cross-border settlement leg and hands off to fast local rails at each end. A Brazilian platform paying a Colombian supplier can initiate in reais or USDC; the long-haul moves on-chain in stablecoins; the recipient receives via Pix-equivalent or SPEI without either side needing to operate a crypto treasury themselves. The result is faster finality and lower all-in cost for the corridors where volume is high and legacy friction is highest.

Context: why cross-border still costs too much

Traditional rails were designed for occasional large institutional transfers, not the high-frequency, often mid-sized flows that define modern LatAm commerce.

A typical international wire carries visible bank fees of $25–50 on the sending side and $10–20 on the receiving side. The bigger hit is the FX spread: banks rarely offer the mid-market rate and markups of 2–5% are common and not always disclosed line-by-line. Then there are correspondent “lifting fees” — each intermediary bank can deduct $15–50 without either endpoint knowing in advance. Add the time value of capital: a company moving $10 million a month across borders can have hundreds of thousands of dollars in flight at any moment, unavailable for operations or hedging, at a real cost of capital.

Settlement often takes one to five days depending on corridor, with weekend and holiday cutoffs compounding the problem. To guarantee same-day or next-day service, operators pre-fund nostro accounts in every destination currency and market. That capital sits idle earning little while compliance and liquidity management add overhead.

The combined effect on key LatAm corridors is well documented in cost analyses: 2–7% effective all-in on many flows, plus days of delay and continuous capital lock-up. For e-commerce platforms, importer/exporter networks, SaaS companies with regional customers, and the payment service providers that serve them, those basis points directly compress margins.

Stablecoin settlement compresses the picture because the cross-border leg becomes atomic, 24/7, low-cost, and final on a public ledger. The sender debits, the receiver credits, and there is no multi-bank chain where value can be deducted or delayed without visibility. On/off conversion still happens at licensed ramps, but the long-haul no longer requires a fresh correspondent relationship for every new corridor once the stablecoin layer and local partners are in place.

How Conduit works

Conduit exposes a single API for programmatic pay-ins and global payouts that can be funded or delivered in fiat or stablecoins. The pattern most associated with the company is the “stablecoin sandwich”: fiat or stablecoin enters on one side, stablecoin handles the cross-border settlement (USDC and other dollar-pegged tokens on supported chains), and licensed local partners deliver the destination currency — or stablecoins if the recipient wants them — via the relevant local rail.

Supported flows include stablecoin-to-fiat payouts and fiat-to-fiat transfers that use stablecoins under the hood for speed and cost. The network claims reach to more than 100 countries and 15+ currencies through direct integrations with local and global rails: Pix (Brazil), SPEI (Mexico), SEPA Instant, Fedwire, RTP, SWIFT where needed, plus on-chain stablecoin legs.

Businesses do not have to custody with Conduit. The platform advertises multiple custody options and the ability to hold stablecoins across chains. For a corporate treasury already comfortable holding USDC or USDT, the integration can be about orchestration and local delivery rather than surrendering control of the bridge asset.

The company was founded in 2021 by Kirill Gertman, who serves as CEO. Leadership includes Chief Legal & Compliance Officer Mark Graves, COO Andre Masse, and Chief Banking Officer Jeremy Berger. The team has grown to approximately 58 people. In late May 2025, Conduit closed a $36 million Series A co-led by Dragonfly and Altos Ventures, with participation from Circle Ventures, Sound Ventures, DCG, Commerce Ventures, and others.

Public materials emphasize integrations with partners such as Yuno, Tempo, Braza Group (for real-time on-chain FX), and Circle’s payments network. Coverage has highlighted Brazil as a core focus alongside other LatAm corridors.

Analysis: scale, economics, and the honest limits

Conduit has stated that its annualized cross-border volume surpassed $10 billion in 2024 after 16x growth year-over-year, with Latin America as the primary market. The figure originates with the company; private infrastructure volume is difficult for outsiders to audit in real time, but the number has been cited in independent analysis, including Polygon Labs’ March 2026 deep dive into LatAm corridor economics.

Industry surveys referenced alongside that analysis show meaningful cost reductions when stablecoin rails are substituted for legacy correspondent flows. EY’s 2025 stablecoin survey found 41% of users reporting at least 10% savings in B2B cross-border, with midsize firms in the 10–20% range in some cases. Broader estimates put all-in savings in the 30–50% band once fees, spreads, float, and intermediary deductions are counted together. The largest structural wins come from removing days of capital lock-up and the web of correspondent deductions rather than on-chain gas alone.

Honest caveats:

  • Conduit is B2B infrastructure delivered through APIs and partnerships. It is not a consumer-facing wallet or app that a freelancer or small business opens directly for one-off transfers. End users typically experience it inside a platform that has integrated the rail.

  • The cheapest and fastest parts of the flow still depend on the quality and pricing of the licensed fiat on/off partners at each edge. Those partners impose their own compliance, fees, and limits. The “stablecoin leg” advantage is real only when the full stack is competitive.

  • Multiple custody options are offered, but self-custody is not the default for every customer or flow. Companies that want to keep keys themselves can do so for the on-chain portion; others will use partner or platform custody. The self-custody upside is clearest for treasuries that already manage stablecoin balances and want a settlement layer that respects that.

  • As a scaling company rather than a regulated bank in every jurisdiction, operational resilience, liquidity in thinner corridors, and the ability to navigate evolving rules remain execution risks. No prominent public audit of a single “Conduit smart contract” appears in materials because the core value is orchestration, partner network, and compliance handling rather than a standalone DeFi protocol.

  • Competition exists from crypto-native players (Bitso Business and others), traditional remittance and FX specialists, and banks experimenting with their own tokenized or stablecoin offerings. Conduit’s positioning is the combination of stablecoin settlement plus broad local-rail access aimed at the LatAm-to-global use cases.

The transparency advantage is still material: on-chain settlement provides an auditable record that correspondent banking never delivered, and issuers like Circle publish regular attestations for USDC reserves.

Why Latin America cares

Latin America’s domestic instant-payment systems are excellent inside each country and almost completely disconnected from one another. Pix transformed Brazilian commerce; SPEI is fast and low-cost in Mexico; comparable systems operate in Colombia, Argentina, and elsewhere. Moving value between them the traditional way still incurs the full international tax in fees, time, and capital.

For the businesses that actually drive cross-border volume — exporters and importers, marketplace operators, SaaS platforms with regional customers, payroll and payout companies, and the fintechs embedded in supply chains — those costs are not theoretical. A few percent shaved off every supplier payment or marketplace settlement flows straight to the bottom line. Days of delay means working capital that could be redeployed or hedged against local currency moves is stuck.

Stablecoins are already the practical bridge asset for much of the region’s payment and treasury activity. Reports have shown Brazil receiving hundreds of billions in crypto transaction value with the overwhelming majority stablecoin-denominated and cross-border plus treasury use cases dominant. Institutional surveys have repeatedly placed Latin America at the top of global regions for stablecoin adoption in cross-border payments.

Conduit’s specific angle is making that bridge usable by companies that do not want to become crypto businesses. They can keep their existing local banking relationships for the last mile and use stablecoin settlement only where it materially improves the unit economics and speed. The 2026 regulatory picture helps: Brazil’s BCB Resolutions 519–521 brought stablecoin foreign-exchange flows into a defined framework; the US GENIUS Act created the first federal rules for payment stablecoins with 1:1 reserves and attestations. For operators spanning US and LatAm corridors, that reduces one layer of legal and counterparty uncertainty.

The self-custody relevance is direct for corporate users. A business can hold dollar-denominated value in a stablecoin under its own control, transmit it across borders with on-chain finality in minutes rather than days, and only interface with traditional rails where local regulation or the recipient demands it. That is a concrete reduction in reliance on slow, opaque banking chains that have historically disadvantaged smaller players in emerging markets.

Takeaway

Conduit is a live example of stablecoin infrastructure moving from pilot to production rail for real B2B volume in the corridors that matter most to Latin America. Its reported scale, the cost math laid out in third-party corridor analyses, and the expanding partner integrations suggest the model has found fit where fees and delays have been painful for years.

It is not a universal solvent. Businesses still need volume, compliant partners at the fiat edges, and the operational maturity to run a hybrid on-chain and traditional payment stack. Claims of exact savings or volume should be validated against a company’s specific corridors and counterparties. There is no assurance that growth will continue at the same rate or that larger banks and networks will not close the gap.

For LatAm companies that move money across borders regularly, the existence of a purpose-built stablecoin settlement layer with local-rail reach is worth a direct evaluation. Run your own cost and liquidity modeling on the corridors you actually use. Review the partner network, custody choices, and compliance setup. Treat volume and savings figures as inputs to diligence, not guarantees.

As with any treasury or payments decision, this is not financial advice. The numbers that matter are the ones you calculate for your own flows.

Sources

  • Conduit site and about page (conduitpay.com, conduitpay.com/about, conduitpay.com/send)
  • “Conduit Raises $36 Million Series A to Scale Use of Stablecoins for Cross-Border Payments,” Business Wire, May 28, 2025
  • “LATAM Corridor Economics: Why Enterprises Are Betting on Stablecoins for Cross-Border Payments,” Polygon blog, March 6, 2026
  • Company statements and partnership announcements (Yuno, Braza, Circle, Tempo integrations referenced in public materials)
  • Industry context: EY 2025 stablecoin survey, Fireblocks 2025 Latin America stablecoin adoption survey, Chainalysis Latin America crypto adoption reports, BVNK Stablecoin Utility Report 2026, Juniper Research cross-border B2B stablecoin projections

Closes #16