Australian digital wallet provider and payment startup Stables recently launched international remittances between Australia and the Philippines, according to a press release from the company. Stables users spanning over 130 countries can now send Australian dollars or Philippine pesos to a recipient pool exceeding 140 million individuals across Australia and the Philippines, all facilitated by stablecoins.
Founded in February 2021 as the brainchild of Erez Rachamim, Bernardo Bilotta, Daniel Li, David Nichols, and Tony Tao, Stables is a digital wallet that allows users to spend, send, and earn stablecoins, all on one balance. In 2023, the startup launched Asia Pacific’s first stablecoin virtual card powered by Mastercard, allowing Stable users to seamlessly spend their stablecoin balance anywhere Mastercard cards are accepted, in-store or online.
“This is the first time in Australian history that a company has embedded stablecoins in remittance rails with both domestic jurisdictions covered to deliver a payload with no middlemen, intra-day with sub 1% fees, we cannot wait to bring feature parity to the Philippines by May 2024,” said Co-Founder and CEO Erez Rachamim. “Our users can now send Philippines Pesos or Australian Dollars from their stablecoin balance directly into any local bank account or eWallet, without the need for the other party to have a Stables wallet or know that the funds started as a digital asset on the blockchain.”
The Philippines is notably a top recipient of remittances. As per the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief 39, released in December 2023, the Philippines ranked fifth globally in terms of remittance receipts for the previous year. As Southeast Asia’s primary remittance recipient, the Philippines annually garners over $40 billion, including $5.76 billion from Australia alone. This has been attributed to the large number of Overseas Filipino Workers and the Filipino diaspora sending money back to families in the Philippines.
With approximately 44% of Filipinos aged 15 and above unbanked according to a report from McKinsey & Company, the country has seen a surge in digital payment adoption, notably through platforms like GCash.
Stablecoins have been touted as a game-changer for remittances for their ability to provide faster, cheaper, cross-border peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries, such as banks or money transfer operators. Additionally, although stablecoins are digital assets like cryptocurrency, they are backed by fiat currencies such as the US dollar—making them much less volatile than Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Prominent backers of Stables comprise leading global venture capital firms such as Rocket Internet, FinTech Collective, and DACM, alongside notable angel investors like Alvin Singh and Bosco Tan, co-founders of Pocketbook, and Larry Diamond, co-founder of Zip Co.