“It’s evolving,” admits Aishwary Gupta, Global Head of Payments at Polygon Labs. With a background in web2 payments and treasury management at American Express (“moving money across the borders”), for Aishwary, the problem isn’t the tech: the technical rails themselves are moving fast.
“For Polygon, we just upgraded to 1,000 TPS, and in two months, we’ll be around 5,000 TPS. So effectively, the infrastructure is available… You can scale Polygon to have 50,000 transactions per second if the demand is coming in.”
Aishwary maintains that the old scaling challenges are fading fast, yet they’re quickly being replaced by other snags, such as regulatory hurdles and liquidity bottlenecks.
Aishwary joined Polygon in 2021 as their “first full-time employee in DeFi.” Comparing the state of tokenized payments today to back then, he says, the difference is night and day. Four years ago, according to Aishwary, the fees were higher and the onboarding experience far worse.
“Four years back, you would pay 5%, maybe 10% as an on-ramp fee. You would have to try five different on-ramps; maybe one works. So, from that situation to today, it is much easier to go out and do those transactions and get on-ramps for your money. We have not fully evolved, but from a four-year perspective, it has become much smoother.”
The problem, Aishwary says, is that fees are shaped by market structure and the patchwork of local rules:
“There are only one or two players in particular markets who have either got licensed or are in liquidity sandboxes. So the number of people who are effectively authorized to do the on-ramps and off-ramps is much lower. Hence, you will see all this arbitrage coming in…
On-chain, you’re still paying only one cent, even if you move a billion dollars… It’s just that regulatory arbitrage is in the way.”
If stablecoin issuers and other tokenized RWA providers are taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage, where are they going? Which regions are best preparing for the multi-trillion-dollar explosion in this sector, taking the tech and running with it, so to speak?
Aishwary points to four main regions. The world’s financial capitals, the U.S., Singapore, Europe, and the Middle East:
“These are the top four where we are seeing massive acceptance.”
Singapore is another pioneer in the tokenized RWAs space, particularly when it comes to stablecoins. Its Payment Services Act and Financial Services and Markets Act create a clear licensing regime for digital token service providers, which are tightly supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and aligned with international AML/CFT standards.
Major companies like Nium, Zodia Custody, and Crypto.com have chosen Singapore for its innovative payment rails and regulatory framework. Aishwary shares:
“Apart from U.S. dollars in the payment space, I think we see the second-highest volume in Singapore dollars.”
Europe comes next for Aishwary as an example of “slow and steady” progress. While the MiCA legislation could do with some tweaks, he says they’ve done “a lot of due diligence” for stablecoin issuers, and established companies like Bitstamp and Fireblocks now offer regulated digital asset payment services under the MiCA regime.
Finally, the Middle East is not trailing far behind. In Abu Dhabi, for example, regulators have outlined requirements for banks issuing stablecoins, creating clear guidelines for reserve management and compliance.
Since Aishwary brought up the GENIUS Act, I ask what he thinks about the yield clause, which prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying the holder any form of interest or yield. He says:
“The problem is this capital, which is sitting in the banks, is sitting because they are accruing at least some interest, not high, but still something. Now, if the same dollar for you is giving you better interest on-chain versus off-chain, then effectively you would want to keep your dollar on-chain, which means that it actually impacts the entire banking flow.”
In fact, TradFi institutions and crypto-native asset managers alike are increasingly seeking yield in on-chain products like tokenized U.S. Treasuries, private credit, and regulated money-market funds.
We turn from stablecoins to other trends within tokenized RWAs. While tokenized stocks are becoming a favorite talking point among centralized exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase, and DeFi platforms like Synthetix and Mirror Protocol, Aishwary is as frank as he is analytical:
“Everyone is in the frenzy of tokenized stocks. They think tokenized stocks are the best thing. At Polygon, we did tokenized stocks a year and a half back. It does not work. There’s no demand.”
I scratch my head and wonder why so little interest. He explains:
“Until you’re from North Korea and don’t have access to Apple shares, I already have access to Apple shares in my bank account. Even sitting in India, even sitting in Dubai, anywhere in the world. So you’re not really actually going to people who do not have access to it.”
Moreover, he says, liquidity remains an unsolved issue.
“The liquidity on-chain is also a very big problem right now. They don’t have that much liquidity. So most of the time you will end up having a bad quote or having a bad rate.”
Not exactly the breakthrough many expected.
Where does Aishwary see real promise in this tokenized money world? Two major trends that “people are not focusing on enough yet” are non-USD stablecoins and tokenized commodities.
“If you look at Polygon, we have more than 50 or 60% of the total market share of non-USD stablecoins, and that’s growing. We’re actually expanding on it a lot more. Commodities are also something, like gold, silver, to make them accessible and tradable.”
“We have these commodities or assets on chain already, but they have not yet grown in a way where they become an ecosystem of their own, so that is something which is missing.”
In just a few years, tokenization has moved from proof-of-concept pilots to global infrastructure, with billions now flowing into diverse real-world assets across continents.
What’s next isn’t just about scaling up and clearing regulatory hurdles; it’s about how the industry can actually unlock fresh types of value and usefulness, reaching far beyond what stablecoins have already begun.
