In a stablecoin sector often driven by ambitious promises, our Stable Pulse guest Darren Wang brings a perspective shaped by the operational realities of regulated global payments.
As founder and CEO of Owlting (NASDAQ: OWLS), the company behind OwlPay, Wang argues that stablecoin payments can only scale when licensing, compliance, banking access, liquidity, and technology are built together—not bolted on later.
Owlting began investing in licenses and cross-border infrastructure before stablecoin payments became a mainstream enterprise priority. Wang describes a multiyear effort to establish money-transmission permissions in the United States where Owlting holds 42 money transmitter licenses or equivalents, while pursuing expansion in markets including Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Latin America, and Europe.
“License means responsibility,” Wang says. For him, a payments company must do more than move tokens: it needs the legal authority and controls to onboard customers, conduct KYC and AML checks, monitor transactions, access banking partners, and settle money into local currencies.
Licensing as Infrastructure
Wang’s experience highlights the difference between proving that stablecoins can move on-chain and operating a real cross-border payments business. A token transfer may be immediate, but a usable payment still depends on compliant conversion, local banking access, sufficient liquidity, and reliable payout channels in the destination market.
That is why Wang sees licensing as core infrastructure. He argues that a single bank or payments partner rarely provides worldwide coverage: a provider may support the U.S. but lack the regulatory permissions, liquidity, or local settlement capability required for another market, such as Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, or China.
OwlPay’s response is to make its regulated rails available to other fintechs. Rather than requiring every startup to build a full licensing program, compliance stack, partner network, and local-currency operation from scratch, Wang wants OwlPay to supply that foundation through a single platform and API connection. The company is expected to reach USD 1 billion in cumulative processed volume across fiat and stablecoin by year end.
Compliance Is the Product
Wang describes compliance as a product capability, not a back-office function. As money moves between bank accounts, stablecoin wallets, and multiple blockchains, financial institutions need tools for customer verification, sanctions and AML screening, transaction monitoring, and traceability across the full payment flow.
This is especially important where traditional financial infrastructure meets public blockchain rails. Banks can monitor fiat movement within their own systems, but stablecoin settlement introduces new operational and regulatory requirements. Wang’s view is that providers must bridge those environments with integrated infrastructure rather than leave compliance gaps for customers to solve.
The Hardest Problem: Local Liquidity
Regulation alone is not enough. Wang repeatedly emphasizes that a stablecoin payment is only useful if the recipient can access local currency quickly and reliably—at the transaction size required.
Sending value into Japan, for example, requires more than transferring USDC on-chain; it requires regulated local partners and adequate yen liquidity to complete settlement. That is why Wang places liquidity management and corridor depth alongside licensing as the most difficult problems in global payments.
Building for What’s Next
Wang is optimistic about stablecoin rails, particularly for B2B payments, import-export flows, remittances, and fintech platforms. But he does not suggest that global payments have been “solved”; he sees continued work ahead in local liquidity, institutional adoption, compliance at scale, and infrastructure for agentic commerce.
OwlPay’s work on AI-agent checkout reflects that longer-term view. Wang expects AI agents to increasingly search, book, and pay for goods and services, but he believes those experiences will still rely on the same fundamentals: licensed operations, KYC and AML controls, compliant settlement, and dependable connections to local financial systems.
That is what makes Wang a credible voice on the regulatory landscape. His point of view is grounded not in policy theory, but in the practical work of building a global payments network—one license, bank partnership, liquidity corridor, and compliance process at a time.
Be sure to tune into his interview with Dante Reminick, host of Stable Pulse, from Stablecon!
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Website: https://www.owlting.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/owlting
