How crypto payments can become the new ‘tap-and-go’ — Pulsar co-founder

2025-04-24 13:36:30

What if paying with crypto was as easy and as fun as sending a meme on X?

In the latest episode of The Clear Crypto Podcast, StarkWare’s Nathan Jeffay and Cointelegraph’s Gareth Jenkinson sit down with Stefana Banciu, growth lead at Pulsar Money, to explore how blockchain is bringing payments into the digital age, with speed, transparency and a dash of playfulness.

Transforming Web3 payments

Banciu lays out how Pulsar is pushing the frontier of Web3 payments with features like social transfers that allow users to send crypto directly through X, simply by tagging a handle

“You can actually have super seamless, easy and convenient payments, and it can also be super fun.”

The episode cuts through the crypto jargon to tackle a question with mainstream resonance: Why aren’t we using crypto for everyday transactions yet?

“I wish I could say yes, but that wouldn’t be a true reflection of the state of affairs,” Jenkinson admits when asked if crypto is widely used for payments. He points to Mastercard-linked crypto cards as a stopgap, but says the real revolution hasn’t yet reached the coffee shop counter.

Related: Luxury app Dorsia taps MoonPay for crypto payments

For Banciu, the path forward lies in bridging fun and fundamentals. While crypto’s founding ideals include borderless, permissionless transfers and low fees, she says onboarding the next wave of users will require experiences that are intuitive, social and entertaining.

Their platform includes a “social payments module” that lets users send crypto directly through X by tagging a handle, a small but powerful step toward making transactions feel more like communication than banking.

“You can actually send funds directly on Twitter,” Banciu says.

“This is a cool use case to showcase people that yes, with crypto payments you can actually have super seamless, easy and convenient payments.”

But convenience alone isn’t enough. Banciu says making crypto fun is key to onboarding the next wave of users.

“We all know within the crypto space, the whole community that is here for perhaps something else than payments, which is quite boring, right?” she adds. “So we said, OK, why not think of a way to onboard users, make them do payments in a fun way?”

For Jenkinson, making crypto usable as a true “medium of exchange” is essential to its legitimacy.

“If we’re not using cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange, then it’s not solving one of the core characteristics that makes money, money.”

To hear the full conversation on The Clear Crypto Podcast, listen to the full episode on Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!

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