Yesterday I called out a payment processor for how badly they treated my business.
Today, I'm giving credit to a company that did the EXACT OPPOSITE.
I decided to switch to @Commas.
And within just 15 MINUTES, their team personally onboarded me and got my account APPROVED.
15 MINUTES.
No endless emails.
No AI bots repeating the same useless responses.
No waiting days to speak to an actual human.
Just a team that understood my situation and got things moving.
That's how you treat business owners.
Now, I've been reading the comments under my previous posts, and I noticed A LOT of you are also looking for an alternative payment processor.
So I might have something for you.
I'm working with @Commas on a special LOWER processing fee offer for 10 business owners who are currently processing payments.
If you're processing payments and looking for better rates, comment "COMMAS" below.
I'll select 10 people from the comments.
Rain joins the OCC queue. For context:
• 2011-2024: fewer than 4 charter applications a year
• 2025: 18
• 2026: 16+ crypto filings in just 7 months
This year alone, the OCC granted conditional approval to @Stablecoin, @cryptocom, @coinbase, @worldlibertyfi, then @Bastion, @withAUSD and @catena_labs in September. Circle and BitGo have gone further and secured final approval.
The GENIUS Act turned the federal charter into the entry ticket for stablecoins. Not having one will soon be a problem.
1/6 We submitted our application to the OCC to establish Modern Treasury National Trust Bank. If approved and authorized to open, the bank would add federally supervised digital asset custody and related fiat services to @ModernTreasury.
Getting paid by US clients and platforms usually takes a US account and routing number. Users outside the country rarely have one.
Our guide covers how fintechs issue named USD virtual accounts, the three common setups, and how to launch: https://t.co/HjT64Z0Icb
Portugal is the country that had the largest opportunity of the last twenty years: it attracted essentially la crème de la crème of tech. Incredible place. It would have had all the conditions to be the #1 place in Europe for many if only it had been able to offer a reliable system to incorporate and run companies. Unfortunately, it made doing business close to impossible and uncertain. While allowing mass migration to arrive with no prior authorization (tot. 1.5M, 14% of the population), it decided to cut the NHR and replace it with the IFICI regime as implemented today: complex, based on express authorization and, contrary to its original intention, in reality usable only by later-stage entrepreneurs.
With a mildly efficient system, or an EU Inc. and/or a less convoluted IFICI, the stretch Lisbon–Cascais would be the European Bay Area, with thousands of new companies building the future from Portugal. This would have meant, among others, allowing thousands of young Portuguese to thrive in their own country instead of leaving for London or anywhere else to make it.
Unfortunately it won't be the case. In terms of real estate, I might be completely wrong: but it will keep rising because of very weird supply-demand logic, against all odds and very reasonable predictions. Golden visa has never been the issue behind real estate price spikes. Chances are Portugal is going to be like Ryanair: everyone frustrated, but will keep “selling tickets”.
🧈🧈🧈
we’re spending so much time on iterating UX and carefully thinking through each and every flow.
completely abstracting DeFi while leveraging it.
Avici will be the best consumer app on @solana pretty soon.
btw its live on our Testflight group to try now (link below)
Lead Bank 🆚 Column
Same category (BaaS)… completely different playbooks.
Two very different bets on the future of banking:
Lead Bank: $124M revenue (+65% YoY)
Column: $153M revenue (+219% YoY)
• Lead Bank is going ALL-IN on stablecoins
→ Powering Stripe / Bridge / Visa stablecoin cards
→ $4.5B in stablecoin card volume (+673% YoY)
→ Monetizing via interchange, processing & BaaS fees
• Column is scaling global infrastructure
→ Expanding into Africa & Central Asia
→ Positioning as the USD banking layer for emerging markets
What’s interesting:
Lead Bank is becoming the regulated backbone of crypto-native finance.
Column is becoming the infrastructure layer for global FinTech.
Same race. Different tracks.
Thoughts?
📷 Sacra
Mastercard revealed the 87 companies in its new Crypto Partner Program 👇
And the list says a lot about where payments might be heading.
This isn’t just crypto startups. It’s an entire financial stack: blockchain rails like Solana and Polygon Labs, infrastructure players like Fireblocks and BitGo, plus stablecoin, exchange, and banking partners.
The real play: connecting traditional payments with blockchain settlement.
Cards and wallets may stay the same for users.
But behind the scenes, stablecoins could increasingly power how money actually moves..