VelaFi: Building controlled stablecoin corridors across regions

VelaFi did not begin with a thesis about abstract demand for stablecoins. It began as a crypto exchange that converted local fiat into crypto and back again. Then customers started buying stablecoins for a practical reason: they needed to pay vendors outside Latin America after earning revenue in local currency. The product direction followed the payment problem.

Tang's own career has followed the same corridor. He has lived in Mexico for ten years and has watched successive generations of Asian companies enter Latin America. He has also seen Latin American entrepreneurs look for vendors and business partners in Asia, especially Greater China. That experience gives VelaFi a practical view of the language, time-zone and cultural gaps surrounding the payment itself.

That practical focus shapes how Hongyi Tang, who currently leads VelaFi, thinks about the market. Customers may understand stablecoins better than they did a few years ago, but the technology itself is not the main purchasing argument. Tang described "What is really winning the client is the feature and the value you generate to them through the technology" as the central commercial question. Faster settlement, lower overall costs and a usable platform are what turn the rail into a business service.

Range's view is that this outcome requires one operating model across stablecoins and fiat. Range starts with regulatory and reporting requirements, translates them into operational controls and orchestrates the risk and compliance providers a company already uses. Transaction monitoring, reconciliation and reporting then run from the same record. For a corridor that may touch local bank accounts, stablecoin wallets and foreign counterparties, that sequence gives finance and compliance teams control over the payment as one process.

Payment demand came before the product category

Tang described VelaFi's earliest product as a straightforward exchange between local fiat and crypto. The team initially assumed customers buying stablecoins might want to invest in Bitcoin or other assets. The actual use case was more immediate. Global businesses operating in Latin America were collecting local-currency revenue, struggling with FX and trying to send funds back to treasury operations in places such as Hong Kong or Singapore.

Some vendors, including cloud and advertising service providers, were willing to accept stablecoins. That gave these businesses a workable route for paying invoices when the conventional path was difficult. VelaFi responded by developing a cross-border payment product around the behavior it was already seeing. The lesson is commercial as much as technical: adoption starts where a stablecoin removes a concrete payment constraint.

Tang also identified 2025 as a turning point in market understanding. He connected that shift to the GENIUS Act in the United States, regulatory developments in Hong Kong and Circle's public listing. In his account, those events gave businesses more context for stablecoins as a payment method and made the category easier to explain. He offered a personal measure of that change: his parents finally understood what he did. Even then, customers remained focused on the result rather than the mechanism.

This is why the durable product is broader than conversion. Tang argued, "Stablecoin probably will be another kind of FX." In his framing, stablecoins can support faster settlement, lower costs and more efficient operations in markets with very different currency regimes. Range's view is that providers should measure success by the control and utility delivered to the customer, not by how visible the blockchain is in the user experience.

Control is the product in a cross-border corridor

The need looks different by market. In Argentina, Tang described a restricted FX environment where stablecoins create access to international commerce. His summary was direct: "stablecoin means freedom, means option, means alternative." For entrepreneurs and companies with international activity, an additional settlement route can preserve the ability to do business beyond the local market.

Tang did not limit the case to countries with FX restrictions. He pointed to the United States and Mexico corridor, where the value comes from remittances and business operations that can become faster, cheaper and easier to use. That matters because it separates structural adoption from a single macroeconomic condition. A corridor can remain useful after the immediate constraint changes if it improves the full operating cost and experience of moving money.

His personal example made the trade-off concrete. When funds are sent to his Mexican bank account through an international wire, he cannot choose the bank's FX rate, may encounter a foreign-exchange commission and can wait roughly five or six business days for settlement. The payment is technically in motion, but the recipient has limited visibility and limited influence over the conversion.

Tang contrasted that process with a route that begins on a local rail in Asia, moves through a stablecoin and ends in Mexican pesos through a local payment method. The stablecoin can reach his wallet before he chooses when to convert, while the final local transfer can settle immediately. "And most importantly, I feel more control on the whole process and know when my counterparty initiate the payment." Speed and cost matter, but the ability to see initiation, onchain settlement and final conversion turns that route into an operationally useful corridor. It also separates settlement from the recipient's FX decision, giving the recipient agency over when the final conversion happens.

Licensing becomes reusable infrastructure

VelaFi's commitment to licensing came from the conditions in which the company was built. Tang said the company was formed in 2021 and launched its product in 2022, when failures across the industry made banking relationships difficult to secure. "So license and compliance was the only way if you are the entrepreneur from that generation, from that year." Banking partners required the company to demonstrate licensing, a compliance program and the supporting operational structure. Compliance was therefore part of obtaining access to the partners needed to operate, rather than a layer added after the payment product was established.

Tang was careful not to present that path as the only possible model for every new company. Entrepreneurs starting in 2026 may be able to use banking-as-a-service or crypto-as-a-service providers and rely on external licensing and compliance infrastructure. The strategic decision depends on what the business needs to own, what it can responsibly outsource and how its partners expect the service to be governed.

For VelaFi, the investment became an asset beyond access to bank accounts. Tang said the company can help other entrepreneurs build on its platform using its technology, compliance program and licenses. Infrastructure assembled to satisfy partners can therefore become part of the commercial product. It shortens the distance between a company's payment idea and an operating service without removing the controls that regulated counterparties require.

Range's view is that this is where licensing and day-to-day operations must stay connected. A license establishes the right framework, while each payment still needs controls, counterparty context and evidence. Range helps companies apply their requirements to transactions, coordinate the providers already in their compliance stack and maintain monitoring, reconciliation and reporting across the resulting activity. The operating record makes the regulatory posture usable every day.

Monitoring has to follow the whole payment

A stablecoin corridor introduces more observable steps and more counterparties than a simple view of the sending and receiving bank accounts. Tang described fiat counterparties, stablecoin counterparties, conversions into other currencies and withdrawals to additional destinations. Each action can change the context of the payment. Range's view is that the monitoring model therefore has to follow activity across both the bank and blockchain sides of the corridor. Seeing the wallet without the fiat counterparty, or the bank transfer without the later onchain movement, leaves the operator with only one part of the transaction.

Onchain analysis covers only part of that job. Tang's conclusion was that "it requires you to have more transaction monitoring tools" across the payment lifecycle. He pointed to pattern-based monitoring that can identify behavior such as breaking activity into small transactions or directing transfers into different bank accounts instead of moving them onchain. These are patterns across a payment lifecycle, not isolated wallet checks.

Range's view is that a unified counterparty and transaction record is essential for this model. Finance and compliance teams need to understand when a bank account, wallet and other payout destination belong to the same counterparty, then apply policy to the complete relationship. Continuous monitoring, reconciliation and reporting can work from that shared context, giving operators one view of how the payment moved and why it was allowed to proceed.

Tang expects adoption to remain gradual. He highlighted importers, exporters, logistics companies and ecommerce merchants as businesses likely to consider stablecoins when cross-regional payments create a real pain point. Over time, he also expects more activity to remain onchain, including payroll and bill payments. He said, "everything can be settled in stablecoin directly." Range reads this as an operating requirement: as conversion becomes less central, controls extend further into the systems that manage treasury, transactions, invoices and reporting.

Build stablecoin operations with control

Range reads the VelaFi story as a practical model for making a corridor useful: solve a real payment constraint, build the licensing structure partners require and monitor the complete movement across fiat and stablecoins. Range gives companies one operational record for those requirements, controls and workflows. See how Range supports stablecoin operations.

About VelaFi

VelaFi is a stablecoin-powered financial infrastructure platform for global businesses operating through regulated entities across Latin America, Asia and the United States. Its platform provides on/off ramps, cross-border payments, multi-currency accounts, foreign exchange services and treasury tools directly or through APIs. Learn more at velafi.com.

Want to appear on Range Stablecoin Fireside? If you are building with stablecoins and want a seat on the show, get in touch by email or on X.