Huma Finance co-founder Richard Liu on Wednesday said blockchain-based payment systems are likely to see faster adoption across parts of the BRICS bloc, particularly India, Brazil, and South Africa, while countries with rigid foreign currency controls, such as China and Russia, will remain difficult markets to penetrate.
“The solution itself can work for almost all countries except those countries that have a strong tie with foreign currency control,” Liu said in an interview with Yellow.com.
Liu’s comments come as BRICS nations move toward greater financial coordination, including discussions around digital currency settlements.
He said that for emerging markets with flexible regulatory regimes, blockchain rails offer a chance to overcome the inefficiencies of existing systems such as SWIFT.
Referring to how conventional cross-border transfers often take multiple days to complete, Liu described the practical impact of T+0 (same-day) settlement.
“Swift is so old, slow, and expensive,” he said. “For example, if you send money from London to the Philippines, it just takes multiple days for it to settle and it’s very expensive. What we did today, all those things are T+3 or T+4. We innovate to be T+0.”
He explained that Huma’s PayFi model enables merchants and suppliers to receive funds almost instantly by using blockchain-based liquidity to front-settle payments that would otherwise be delayed in the traditional banking process.
“For example, when Amazon pays their Asian suppliers, today it’s T+2 or T+3,” Liu said. “As soon as we detect the money coming out from Amazon’s account, because we know that money is flowing into the financial system, we are able to front-run, we provide liquidity for you to settle the transaction on the same day.”
That speed, he said, can be crucial for smaller businesses.
“For average people, if people like you and me, we probably have decent income and we are okay,” he said. “But for many businesses, that three days cash supply makes a huge difference.”
Liu added that near-instant settlement could soon become the standard across both cross-border and domestic payments. “We believe the future—in five to ten years—T+0 will be the mainstream,” he said. “Not only cross-border payments, even credit card payments.”
He also emphasized Huma’s focus on regulatory compliance as it expands PayFi services globally. Liu said Huma merged with Swiss-based ARF to operate within established financial rules.
“They got the legal structure for them to be able to support all the licensed financial institutions, all the licensed payments companies for the entire world,” he said. “At this moment, all our customers have payment licenses.”
To reduce risk and regulatory friction, Liu said Huma only uses USDC, describing it as “the one that has the best compliance posture.”
The company’s model allows payment firms to transact in stablecoins while continuing to meet local regulatory requirements.
“Our interface is very simple,” he said. “When they pay us back, they also pay us back stablecoin. So that actually saves us from having to deal with all those complexities.”
“For example, China is harder to penetrate, and Russia as well,” he said. “But countries like India, Brazil, and South Africa can potentially be reached more easily, and they can really benefit substantially from this type of innovation.”