The hottest Payments Substack posts right now

Afridigest provides a Week in Review focusing on Africa tech, sharing exclusive reports on Jumia Food and startups digitizing payments in Nigeria.
The Afridigest Week in Review highlights organizations like Partech, Gro Intelligence, and executives like Cyril Collon, Tayo Oviosu, and others.
The content is curated for paid subscribers, offering in-depth insights into the African tech ecosystem.

Money is a platform where value transmission depends on belief and agreements among people. Stability and acceptance are crucial for efficient transactions.
Bitcoin's stability as a payments platform is weak, but it offers potential benefits for wealth storage and operating outside government surveillance.
Bitcoin's innovation as a payments platform, especially its programmable nature, is significant and revolutionary in the world of monetary economics.

The UK has been a leader in financial innovation, notably with Faster Payments and Open Banking, demonstrating expertise in creating efficient and secure payment solutions.
A Layered Payment Architecture in the UK would involve Instant Settlement Rails, Account and Identity Management, and Overlay Services and Networks to promote economic growth and reduce transactional costs.
The strategic benefits of the Layered Approach include robust security, economic empowerment, future-ready infrastructure, and reinforcing the UK's global leadership in fintech innovation.

Banks don't just hold your money; they lend it out and invest it to earn interest. When you deposit money, the bank essentially sees it as a loan from you.
Finance has important roles, like reducing risk and helping money flow to better opportunities. This means finance can make the economy more productive.
Banks create money by giving out loans based on deposits, not by just moving your cash around. This process helps fund things like homes and businesses.

AI is really changing how payroll works by helping to easily extract data from documents. This makes processing payroll much quicker and easier for companies all over the world.
Younger employees want more digital benefits and flexibility in how they get paid. Companies like Papaya Global are trying to meet these demands with new features like employee wallets for better control of their money.
Many traditional companies are still using outdated spreadsheets for payroll. They need to adapt quickly to new technology and regulations to keep up with modern business demands.

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India is leading in payment innovations like UPI, which has skyrocketed transaction numbers and financial inclusion. This shows that developing countries can sometimes teach developed nations a thing or two about digital payments.
The UK, despite being an early pioneer in payments, is not growing as fast as India. Its Faster Payments Service has only gained a small share of transactions, while UPI has taken over the market in India.
For successful payment systems, it's important to focus on user-friendliness and strong government support. Learning from India's successful payment models can help improve financial technology in other countries.

The U.S. needs to create a supportive environment for financial technology so that innovation can thrive. This means having clear rules and regulations for businesses to follow.
Developing a U.S.-led payment system using stablecoins can help improve cross-border transactions. It aims to keep the dollar strong in international trade.
It's important to set clear categories and regulations for different types of tokens, like security tokens and commercial tokens. This will help businesses understand what is allowed and protect consumers.

The crypto universe is growing, but capital is getting more selective. Money is concentrating in more liquid, established tokens with clearer fundamentals and stronger tokenomics.
Crypto is converging with traditional capital markets as spot ETFs, corporate treasuries, bank charters, and staking products bring steadier institutional demand and make crypto an income‑generating allocation.
Stablecoins and tokenization are becoming the backbone of onchain adoption; cheap, high‑volume stablecoin transfers and production‑scale tokenized equities, treasuries, and funds are unlocking new payments and investment use cases.

USDC transfer volume exploded in January 2026, driven mainly by USDC on Base and producing trillions in adjusted transfer value and very high onchain velocity.
About half of Base’s USDC activity comes from DeFi plumbing — large LP rebalances on Aerodrome and flash‑loan/arbitrage activity on Morpho — driven by automated strategies that move huge sums with little net economic change.
Raw transfer volume can be misleading because it mixes mechanical DeFi flows with real payments and settlement, so we need more granular classification to understand how stablecoins are actually being used.