Hey everyone!
Jack Chong is co-founder and CEO of Checker, a stablecoin liquidity network connecting FX banks, payments companies, and neobanks across emerging markets.
He joins the show to discuss why the global financial system still runs on duct tape and stitched together solutions, and how Checker is building the connective tissue to fix it.
Chong grew up in Hong Kong, studied at Oxford, learned Arabic in Jordan while pursuing a career in diplomacy, and eventually landed in New York building stablecoin infrastructure.
His path is unusual, and it shapes how Checker operates: local relationships, local capital, local market structure, with a global product underneath. This is a super interesting project, and, in my view, is one of the missing pieces of infrastructure needed to fulfill the promise of stablecoins as the new medium for global money movement.
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Key Takeaways
The stablecoin fragmentation problem is more serious than it looks. USDT and USDC promise universality, but every market trades, converts, and accounts for them differently. Checker sits in the middle and makes that complexity invisible for the financial institutions that need to move money across borders.
Checker runs a two-sided network. FX banks, B2B payments companies, and neobanks sit on the demand side. OTC desks and FX brokers handling local fiat conversions sit on the supply side. Over time, customers become providers in other regions, turning the network into a flywheel.
Twelve months after launching in mid-2025, Checker has processed over $3 billion in payment volume and now accounts for roughly 1% of global B2B stablecoin flows.
The Brazil-China corridor is one of the most active and most underserved trade routes in the world. China is among Brazil’s top FDI sources and trading partners, yet most of the money movement still runs through informal brokers. VASP regulation and stablecoins are the path to formalizing it.
Brazil’s VASP framework is expected to be fully in place by Q4 this year. Chong sees a land grab coming: FX brokers, wealth managers, fintechs, and payments companies will all need stablecoin infrastructure fast.
The BRL carry trade will move on-chain. Wall Street macro funds have long been drawn to Brazilian treasury bond yields. Chong thinks stablecoins are the conduit that opens that trade to crypto natives and retail investors.
You can connect with Jack on Linkedin
I really enjoyed this conversation with Jack, and I hope you do as well.
Have a great week everyone!
- AWS
