Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. BitPinas has no commercial relationship with any mentioned entity unless otherwise stated.
📬 Get the biggest crypto stories in the Philippines and Southeast Asia every week — subscribe to the BitPinas Newsletter.
- Guests: David Hsiao, CMO, Morph | Alvin Wong, Head of Emerging Business, Maya
- Recorded: March 14, 2026 — Settle In! Manila Stablecoin Meetup
- Published: Spotify · YouTube · Facebook
- Runtime: 35 minutes 10 seconds
The Philippines is quietly becoming one of Southeast Asia’s most important stablecoin markets. Most of the world hasn’t caught on yet.
In the debut episode of On The Record by BitPinas, Editor-in-Chief Michael Mislos sat down with two people actively building at the intersection of crypto, payments, and remittances in the country — David Hsiao of Morph and Alvin Wong of Maya– to unpack what’s actually happening on the ground, what’s still broken, and what the next three years could look like.
The interview was organized by Drew Azarias (Morph), Jose Mendoza and Marc Cedrix (Bitget SEA).
Watch or Listen to the Episode
Key Takeaways
- The Philippines’ $35B annual remittance market makes it one of the most compelling stablecoin adoption opportunities in the world. However, most of the global crypto industry hasn’t focused here yet.
- Stablecoin flows are already moving under the hood in B2B corridors. The next challenge is making the last mile seamless for retail users.
- The Philippines’ regulatory environment (BSP, VASP licensing, FATF alignment) is a genuine competitive advantage rathen than a compliance checkbox.
- Five infrastructure layers must work together: issuance, on/off ramps, developer tooling, settlement, and compliance.
- The long-term goal is invisibility: stablecoins as infrastructure that works without the users knowing about it.
- The next wave of stablecoin users may be AI agents, not humans.
The Philippines: A Market The World Underestimates
The conversation opened with a question: What’s happening in the Philippines that the rest of the world doesn’t know about yet?
For David Hsiao, the answer starts with remittances. The Philippines ranks fourth in the world for remittance inflows despite being only the 14th most populous country globally. It trails only India, China, and Mexico.
“People in the Philippines are looking for ways to create value outside of their existing physical limitations. That ties into the internet culture, the hustler culture, and the tech culture here.”Â
David Hsiao, CMO, Morph
Alvin Wong pointed to COVID-19 as an accelerant: digital wallet adoption surged so dramatically that roughly every other Filipino now holds a digital wallet. Maya itself is a licensed digital bank and virtual asset service provider (VASP), which means it is at the intersection of banking, payments, and crypto.
Both guests agreed that the regulatory environment particularly the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and its VASP (virtual asset services provider) licensing framework has been notably forward-looking compared to many other markets. The foundation, they argued, is already in place. What’s missing is the bridge.
What’s Still Broken: The Plumbing Problem
Despite the strong foundation, the conversation proceeded to discuss what isn’t working yet.
Alvin described the core problem as a “plumbing” issue. This means the infrastructure connecting sender and receiver across borders. Stablecoin flows are already moving under the hood in B2B corridors, but most retail users don’t know it, and in many cases can’t easily access it.
“What is missing, what is happening right now, is the plumbing — between sender and receiver. We are actually transiting to using stablecoin flows under the hood.”Â
Alvin Wong, Head of Emerging Business, Maya
David added three concrete pain points on the user side: speed (transfers still take days), cost (FX and transaction fees average 6–7% for US-to-Philippines remittances), and capital efficiency (money parked in legacy systems loses value while it waits).
Michael flagged a fourth issue that remains unsolved at the retail level: wallet address complexity. Sending USDC to another person still requires knowing which chain they’re on — Ethereum, Tron, or otherwise. That friction, he noted, is a barrier the industry has not yet really solved at scale.
Regulation: The Philippines as a Regional Model
One of the more striking moments in the episode came when the conversation turned to regulation, and who actually benefits from blockchain’s transparency.
Alvin laid out Maya’s compliance stack in detail: collecting sender and receiver information under FATF’s Travel Rule (even below the standard 50,000-peso threshold), transaction-chain risk analysis, sanctions screening, and regular reporting to the BSP. He noted that this framework is now broadly aligned across the region, such as by MAS in Singapore, HKMA in Hong Kong, and BSP in the Philippines all operate from similar rule sets.
“Because we have much more clarity on the blockchain about where funds are and where they come from versus other fiat channels — the observability is very transparent.”Â
Alvin Wong, Head of Emerging Business, Maya
David noted the irony: a few years ago, crypto was criticized for opacity. Now it’s regulators who can see more clearly on-chain than through traditional fiat rails. The shift in how institutions perceive crypto (from threat to tool) is a key reason 2025 and 2026 have felt different.
The Five Infrastructure Layers
Michael asked David directly: what needs to exist at the infrastructure level for stablecoin settlement to work at scale?
David outlined five layers:
- Stablecoin Issuance: Regulated issuers (USDC, USDT) maintaining a credible dollar peg.
- On/Off Ramps: The bridges connecting fiat users to on-chain activity.
- Developer Layer: SDKs, APIs, and tooling that let builders create applications on top of the infrastructure.
- Settlement Layer: Where Morph sits: the on-chain layer where transactions actually settle.
- Compliance: KYC, AML, and reporting infrastructure that governments and institutions require to trust the system.
Alvin pointed to discoverability as the missing piece across all five layers. Finding a compliant counterparty in another country to route stablecoins through is still harder than it should be. Initiatives like Circle’s payment network are beginning to solve this, he said, but the industry isn’t fully there yet.
Life in Three Years: The Invisibility Thesis
Asked what life looks like for the average Filipino if the infrastructure gets built, David offered a one-word answer: invisibility.
“Users shouldn’t have to understand this tech at all. It should be seamless within their daily lives, and they should just feel the real economic benefits: savings, speed, convenience.”Â
David Hsiao, CMO, Morph
He used GPS as an analogy: invented in the 1970s for the US military, GPS became invisible infrastructure that now powers everything from Grab to Tinder. The goal for stablecoins is similar, which is to be present everywhere, understood by almost no one, but truly beneficial to all.
The Next Users Might Not Be Human
Alvin added a third dimension: the next wave of users might not be human. AI agents, he argued, are already beginning to transact on-chain. As crypto-native APIs become easier to access programmatically, intelligent assistants could become a significant source of stablecoin transaction volume that give out commands, execute cross-border payments, and navigate wallet infrastructure without a human in the loop.
“The next user might not be a human being. It might be an agent that you give a simple command to, and they figure out the complexity.”Â
Alvin Wong, Head of Emerging Business, Maya
David noted that a significant share of stablecoin transactions are already being processed through automated agents. This is a trend he expects to grow exponentially.
The One Move That Changes Everything
The episode closed with a simple question: What’s the single move (by government, industry, or community) that would change everything today?
Michael offered his own answer first which is the harmonization of regulation by different regulators in the Philippines. The U.S. is beginning to align the SEC and CFTC on crypto jurisdiction; he hopes the Philippines follows.
David’s answer: government clarity above all else. Ambiguity deters builders, deters capital, and ultimately deters the infrastructure investments that would benefit users most.
Alvin focused on a specific gap: low-value transaction thresholds for stablecoins, modeled on contactless payment limits. Making small stablecoin transactions frictionless would unlock mass-market adoption in a way that large B2B corridors alone cannot.
“If that can be applied to stablecoins specifically, that would really help the industry. Because at the end of the day, we are bringing in flow of funds inwards to the country.”
Alvin Wong, Head of Emerging Business, Maya
This episode is published on BitPinas: On The Record: The Philippines’ Stablecoin Moment: What The World Doesn’t Know Yet
What else is happening in Crypto Philippines and beyond?
