This article appeared in Newsweek 11 August 2026

Global commerce runs on payment rails that most businesses rarely question. Yet behind every tap, transfer and settlement lies a complex system that introduces friction at scale. According to the World Bank, cross-border payments continue to face challenges around speed, cost and complexity, with transactions often involving multiple intermediaries that can increase friction and delay settlement. This lag is not simply an inconvenience. It constrains liquidity, ties up working capital and limits the efficiency of international trade.

The cost dimension is even more pronounced. Research from the Bank for International Settlements shows that merchant service fees form a significant share of card payment costs, with businesses paying fees to banks, acquirers and card network operators to process transactions. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s reviews have highlighted the high costs businesses face when accepting card payments, leading to reforms aimed at reducing fees and improving transparency across the payments system.

These fees are embedded into pricing structures, shaping everything from retail margins to consumer costs. For large retailers, the impact can reach significant amounts each year, turning payment acceptance into one of the most expensive operational line items.

Speed and cost, however, only tell part of the story. Traditional financial infrastructure is often criticized for lacking flexibility. Payments typically move as fixed instructions that may not automatically respond to real-world events or changing conditions. In trade finance, delayed settlement cycles and limited use of conditional payment mechanisms can restrict global trade flows. Exporters can sometimes wait weeks, or even months, to receive payment even after goods have been delivered, creating cash flow strain across supply chains.

Against this backdrop, policymakers are beginning to take notice. Parliamentary and treasury-level discussions in several markets, including Australia, have increasingly focused on the need for modernized payment infrastructure. Recent research published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI, an academic publisher of peer-reviewed scientig=fic journals) has examined stablecoins as a potential evolution of digital payment infrastructure, highlighting their ability to support automated settlement, conditional payments and more adaptable transaction systems while acknowledging the importance of regulatory frameworks for broader adoption.

Drew Bradford, the CEO of Macropod, has spent his career inside traditional financial systems and believes that the problem is already visible in the data. “Businesses are absorbing a hidden tax on every transaction,” he says. “It shows up in fees, in delays and in the opportunity cost of capital that is sitting idle instead of moving.”

Bradford points to three structural limitations that define legacy payment rails. The first is speed. International transfers often require multiple intermediaries, each introducing processing time. “You can move value from Sydney to the U.K. in minutes using stablecoin infrastructure,” he explains. “That same transaction through traditional channels can take days, and that difference compounds across thousands of payments.”

The second limitation is cost. Merchant fees, interchange costs and foreign exchange spreads accumulate quickly at scale. Bradford notes that in Australia, these costs reach into the billions annually, with individual large retailers facing hundreds of millions in yearly payment expenses. “When you reduce transaction costs to fractions of a cent, you are not optimizing around the edges,” he says. “You are fundamentally changing the economics of commerce.”

The third, and often least understood, advantage is programmability. Stablecoins enable payments to be conditional, linking the movement of money to verified events. Bradford describes a common export scenario involving perishable goods such as cheese and yogurt. Under traditional systems, suppliers ship products and then wait months for payment confirmation. “With programmable settlement, funds can be locked at the point of order and released automatically when delivery is verified,” he says. “That removes uncertainty for both parties and improves trust across the transaction.”

This capability extends beyond trade. Bradford points to applications in areas such as airline loyalty systems, where value can be issued, transferred and redeemed with greater transparency and efficiency. “Money becomes more than a static asset,” he says. “It becomes an instrument that can respond to real-world conditions in real time.”

Macropod was built as a response to these systemic inefficiencies. Bradford and his team drew on their experience in financial services to develop a regulated infrastructure designed to integrate stablecoin capabilities into existing business workflows. The company’s development process included a multi-year regulatory pathway, culminating in its position as one of the first licensed stablecoin infrastructure providers in Australia.

“That regulatory foundation matters,” Bradford says. “Adoption will not come from speculation. It will come from trust, compliance and systems that businesses can rely on at scale.”

In practice, adopting this new infrastructure is designed to be straightforward. Businesses complete identity verification, demonstrate their use case and connect existing bank accounts to digital wallets and supported exchanges. From there, transactions can be executed with the speed and programmability that stablecoin systems enable.

Bradford says that the shift is already underway, even if it remains underrecognized. “This is not a future concept,” he says. “The infrastructure exists today, and businesses are beginning to see where it solves problems they have been carrying for years.”

As payment systems evolve, the conversation is moving away from hype and toward measurable outcomes. Reduced settlement times, lower transaction costs and improved liquidity are tangible advantages that resonate across industries. For companies operating in global markets, these gains translate directly into competitive positioning.

“The question is no longer whether the system can change,” according to Bradford. “It is whether businesses are ready to recognize the inefficiencies they have normalized and move toward something better.”

“When money can move as fast as information, the entire structure of commerce begins to realign. That is the change we are seeing now,” he adds.

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