OSL has expanded its institutional stablecoin-to-fiat payment infrastructure through Banking Circle, adding settlement support across AUD, EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD. The arrangement is aimed at institutional payment flows that need regulated conversion, multi-currency banking access and settlement across markets.
Following TNGlobal’s coverage of the expansion, we asked Siwei Gong, Global Head of Financial Institution Partnerships at OSL Group, where institutional demand is coming from, how a typical stablecoin-to-fiat transaction works, and what still needs to change for this infrastructure to become ordinary enterprise payment plumbing.
OSL can now support institutional payment flows across AUD, EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD through Banking Circle. What are the main use cases driving demand for stablecoin-to-fiat settlement today, and which are moving beyond pilots into recurring transaction activity?
We’re seeing strong institutional demand in cross-border B2B settlement and corporate treasury management. These are use cases where friction in traditional payment rails tends to be particularly acute, and where a stablecoin-to-fiat model can offer a clear, measurable benefit.
Corporates use this for supplier payments, intercompany settlement between regional entities and moving working capital across markets without being tied to a single correspondent bank’s cut-off times.
These have moved well beyond proof-of-concept. With Banking Circle now supporting OSL across six currencies and settling 365 days a year, this is infrastructure our institutional clients are running recurring transaction volume through today.
Could you walk us through a typical institutional transaction from stablecoin receipt to fiat settlement? Where do conversion, banking access, compliance screening, FX and reconciliation sit in that process?
The experience is designed to feel like a regulated cross-border payment, just faster and with more transparency for the finance team involved.
An institutional client’s funds move through OSL’s licensed digital-asset infrastructure for conversion and settlement, with Banking Circle providing the multi-currency settlement, liquidity and banking access layer through BC-Now. That is what allows funds to reach a bank account in the destination currency and market.
Compliance screening runs throughout the process, so it is less likely to become a bottleneck at the end of a transaction. Clients also get a consolidated view of reconciliation and reporting through the platform, rather than needing to piece together statements from multiple banking relationships on their own.
That’s a large part of the point of this partnership: institutional clients shouldn’t need to manage the underlying complexity of conversion, banking access and compliance separately.
Stablecoins are often promoted for 24/7 settlement, while traditional banking rails still have cut-off times, liquidity constraints and jurisdictional differences. Where do those two systems still fail to line up cleanly in practice?
That’s exactly the gap this partnership was built to close. BC-Now already delivers settlement 365 days a year across six major currencies, which is closer to always-on settlement than traditional correspondent banking has typically offered.
Global banking infrastructure tends not to change overnight, and different markets will likely continue to move at different speeds, for reasons including how local clearing systems are structured and how each regulator approaches oversight. Where those differences show up, they tend to sit at the edges of a transaction rather than in the core experience our clients have day to day.
That’s part of why working with a licensed, established partner like Banking Circle matters: rather than asking an institutional client to navigate those differences themselves, we aim to absorb much of that complexity on their behalf.
What do institutional users require that retail crypto platforms generally do not, particularly around APIs, treasury controls, reconciliation, reporting, counterparty risk and service levels?
Institutional clients need infrastructure, not just an app. That means enterprise-grade APIs that plug into treasury and ERP systems, multi-level approval controls, transaction-level reconciliation tied to real commercial activity, and the counterparty confidence that comes from working with licensed, regulated entities.
Where is institutional demand strongest in Asia today: treasury management, merchant settlement, cross-border B2B payments, remittances, trading-related flows, or another category?
Cross-border B2B and corporate treasury flows are where we’re seeing strong institutional momentum in Asia right now. That’s a key driver behind expanding with Banking Circle into six currencies as our B2B business grows into new markets across the region.
It’s a sign the market is moving past experimentation into more regular operational volume running through regulated stablecoin infrastructure.
Stablecoins now sit alongside tokenized deposits, bank-issued digital money and central-bank digital currency experiments. Do you expect these models to compete directly, or to serve different institutional needs?
We see these as largely complementary rather than competing. Different institutional needs call for different rails, and it’s unlikely any single model ends up serving every use case.
What we’d point to with regulated stablecoin infrastructure today is that it’s already live, interoperable across borders and currencies, and, as this partnership shows, operating on institutional scale, 365 days a year.
Tokenized deposits and central-bank digital currency work are also important parts of how the financial system is likely to evolve, and we expect them to keep developing alongside this. For institutional clients who need something that works across multiple banks, multiple currencies and multiple jurisdictions today, regulated stablecoin infrastructure is one of the models already doing that.
Looking three years ahead, what would have to change in regulation, banking connectivity or market infrastructure for stablecoin-to-fiat settlement to become ordinary enterprise payment infrastructure rather than a specialized crypto workflow?
The direction of travel is already clear. MiCAR in Europe, the GENIUS Act in the US, and Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance all point toward stablecoin infrastructure becoming more standard financial plumbing rather than a niche crypto workflow.
What would help accelerate that further is continued regulatory clarity globally. It also means deeper banking partnerships, like the one we have with Banking Circle, that extend reach into more currencies and markets over time.
And it means ongoing institutional trust-building, since adoption at this level is ultimately a function of confidence as much as it is of technology or regulation. We’re aiming to position OSL to be ready as that happens, and this expansion with Banking Circle is part of that positioning.
Siwei Gong is Global Head of Financial Institution Partnerships at OSL Group, where he leads strategic relationships with banks and global fiat channels. He has more than 15 years of experience across traditional finance and fintech.
Editor’s note: This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and TNGlobal house style. The substance of the interviewee’s responses has been preserved.
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