Eureka
“Eureka” — a cartoon that illustrates how businesses are waking up to the value of programmable money.
Programmable money is digital cash with rules attached. It can pay a supplier automatically when goods arrive, divide revenue the moment a sale closes or hold funds in escrow until conditions are met. It’s still money, but now it behaves like code.
McKinsey estimates that automating payments and reconciliation can cut back-office costs by 30–50% and free up 3–5% of working capital through faster settlement. Stablecoins like USDC make this possible, providing a dollar-pegged, highly liquid form of digital cash that moves instantly and predictably across networks.
The impact now stretches well beyond cross-border payments. In manufacturing, programmable invoices can release payment the moment IoT sensors confirm delivery or temperature compliance, saving about $100 per invoice and shortening settlement cycles by days. In media and gaming, micropayments to creators or studios flow in real time, with transaction costs dropping from roughly 3% to under 0.1%.
At the center of this shift are the companies building the trusted plumbing. Circle, issuer of USDC, operates as a regulated financial infrastructure company, and provides institutions a compliant way to issue, redeem and manage stablecoins within their treasury and settlement operations. While startups such as Fireblocks, Deel, and Superfluid are layering services for payroll, treasury, and subscription management.
As Chris Harmse, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at BVNK, says, “we are entering a period of escape velocity in terms of everyone recognising this is a new and upgraded payments technology.”
8
1
2
“The real friction isn’t technical anymore — it’s regulatory. We can move money in milliseconds, but Swiss SMEs still wait weeks for bank approvals on basic treasury operations. How do we bridge that gap when the plumbing is ready but the compliance layer still runs on paper?”
