meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Bankless

How Crypto Neobanks Work: Frax, Cards, and Visa’s Role | Sam Kazemian

Bankless

[email protected]

Tech News, News, Technology

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Neobanks might be the quiet coordination hack that makes Visa optional. David sits down with Frax’s Sam Kazemian to map the new payment stack: why cards today settle over Visa yet still onboard users into stablecoins, how Frax USD (payments) pairs with sFRAX USD (savings), and why Ethereum remains the “savings/issuance” base while specialized payment chains battle for flows. Sam unpacks Frax’s white-label issuance strategy and RWA plumbing, shares an institutional DD story that highlights reliability over hype, and lays out the metrics that actually matter—card acceptance, bank deposits, chain coverage, and real-world spend. If you’re tracking how stablecoins, neobanks, and RWAs converge into an on-chain economy, this one connects the pipes. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌳KGEN | REQUEST A DEMO https://bankless.cc/KGEN-podcast 💠BIT DIGITAL ($BTBT) | ETH TREASURY https://bankless.cc/bit-digital We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ BTBT) for this segment promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at https://bit-digital.com/investors --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:54 What Is a Neobank 2:45 Crypto Neobanks & Frax’s Two-Coin Model 5:28 Strategy: Be the Pipes, Not the Card 14:48 Design: RWAs On-Chain & Compliance Surface 18:16 Cards Today, Native Pay Tomorrow 28:52 The Standards Fight 33:30 Institutional Proof Point & Growth Curve 40:28 Closed-Loop On-Chain Economy 55:36 What to Track Next --- RESOURCES Sam Kazemian https://x.com/samkazemian --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

People prefer to hold their dollars where most of their net worth is located.

0:05.3

A lot of people now, especially younger people and crypto-native people, most of their net worth is on-chain.

0:11.6

And so things that interact with assets on-chain, whether it's Ethereum, Bitcoin, it's stable-coins.

0:17.0

You need stable-coins to actually interact with these things.

0:19.4

It's a hassle to move it over to bank.

0:22.7

Some people just only off board, right, stable coins to banks because they need to spend stuff, right?

0:29.4

But then the neobanking stuff, like you said, fixes that problem. The situation will reverse.

0:35.6

People will be like, why would I bring my cash back to a bank, right? And it'll be the opposite where right now it's like, why would I bring my cash into stable coins? What can I do with it? But it's actually the opposite of most of your stuff is here on chain, right?

0:53.3

Bankless Nation, we're talking about neo banking today here on the podcast. This has been a word, all of a sudden, neobanking and neobanks has just cropped up across crypto-tweater, across crypto, all of a sudden, for some reason. We got Sam Casmanian from Frax to come on the show today and talk to us about neobanking, and while all of a sudden, crypto's focused on neobanking, Sam, welcome back to bankless. Always happy to be back. Maybe we can just start by defining things. What's a neobank? And why are we talking about them all of a sudden? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because they weren't at all a part of, like, crypto, Right. Neobanks are basically just things like Mercury Revolut, right? Some people or startups might use them. They're like a bank wrapper, right? Like if you think of what a lot of AI companies are, they're chat GPT wrappers, right? They don't actually do the foundational model. Same thing with banks, right? Neobanks are like this wrapper. They have better fintech applications,

1:45.3

easier stuff to wire rather than the crazy paste,

1:49.0

the I-band number, all this stuff.

1:50.9

Like a utility extension of a bank.

1:54.6

So a bank does that has the licenses,

1:56.9

but banks are just terrible U.S.

1:59.1

and terrible innovators.

2:00.9

And maybe the neobank doesn't have the licenses, but they just wrap on top of the bank and then do more things.

2:08.1

Is that right?

2:08.6

Exactly.

2:09.2

And a lot of people always said crypto is super confusing to use.

2:12.1

So when can my grandma use it?

2:13.6

When can my friends that don't know anything about private keys use it?

2:17.1

And like, here's the,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from [email protected], and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of [email protected] and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.