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By CryptoMate
We believe every community leader and company will become a fintech, that every transaction will be a financial product, and that real financial inclusion requires localized, customized, impactful solutions built bottoms-up and self-propelled in monetization. CryptoMate is the platform that makes that possible: community leaders and companies launch, run, and monetize their own financial services on top of our infrastructure, instead of waiting for a centralized fintech to serve their market.
This SCF Build proposal funds the Stellar layer of that thesis: a MoneyGram cash-in → virtual VISA card service that any of CryptoMate's existing clients — emerging fintechs, community leaders, entrepreneurs, SMEs — can offer their users on day one, no centralized launch and no new app to download, just a new financial service that propagates across the platform.
Cash deposit at MoneyGram → USDC settles on Stellar → virtual VISA card pushed directly into the user's Apple Pay / Google Wallet — typically in under five minutes (subject to MoneyGram settlement timing), with zero blockchain exposure to the user and no need to manually type a card number.
CryptoMate runs the platform described above. Today, 40+ clients across 12 countries run their own services on it, reaching 400,000+ end users and processing $120M+ in annualized volume. The Cards product (virtual VISA issuance, 3DS, multi-jurisdiction compliance) is already live, and CryptoMate cards work in both Apple Pay and Google Wallet today via manual binding (the user types the card number into their wallet app). This grant funds three pieces missing: a native Stellar connector in our wallet-abstraction layer, the MoneyGram Ramps SEP-24 integration that wires cash deposits into card top-ups, and push provisioning so the card lands directly in the user's wallet at issuance — no manual binding step.
The result is a working mainnet product on day one — not a new app to launch, but a new financial service that every client on CryptoMate can offer their users immediately.
Maria, Argentinean. She earns cash, has no bank account, and can't shop online or hold dollars. She walks into a MoneyGram branch, hands over pesos, and a virtual VISA card lands in her phone wallet within minutes. She didn't create a Stellar account, didn't buy USDC, never heard of stablecoins. She got a card.
This is the gap MoneyGram Ramps doesn't yet close: Ramps brings cash → USDC, but USDC isn't a spending instrument. Maria still needs a card to actually use the money to access online/international services. CryptoMate is the missing layer.
There are an estimated 1.3 billion unbanked adults globally (World Bank Global Findex 2025). Each one of them lives in a community, and every community has someone — a small fintech, a co-op, an entrepreneur, an SME, a community leader — closer to them than any centralized international service will ever be. CryptoMate's existing clients already operate in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Nigeria, and South Africa — corridors that overlap with MoneyGram's most active on-ramp markets. The grant funds the rail; the local clients deliver it to their own users.
This is a textbook Integration Track project: integrate two existing Stellar building blocks (MoneyGram Ramps and USDC) into a product with proven traction, and ship it to mainnet inside 4 months.
Building blocks used (from the SCF Integration List):
MoneyGram Ramps (SEP-24 anchor) — cash on/off-ramp
USDC on Stellar (Circle) — settlement asset
Existing CryptoMate infrastructure this attaches to:
Virtual VISA card issuance (Asia, USA, LATAM BIN sponsors live)
Apple Pay and Google Wallet support (live today via manual card binding; push provisioning added in this grant)
KYC, AML, multi-jurisdiction compliance (live)
Holding-wallet architecture for Polygon, BNB Chain, Tron (Stellar added here)
User (a CryptoMate-powered app from any client on the platform)
│ KYC + deposit request
▼
CryptoMate backend ──────┐
│ SEP-10 / SEP-24 │ Holding wallet (G…)
▼ │ + USDC trustline
MoneyGram Ramps anchor │
│ User pays cash │
│ at MoneyGram │
▼ ▼
USDC on Stellar mainnet ──┘
│ Horizon stream detects payment, memo matches
▼
Virtual wallet credited → Cards product provisions VISA
│
▼
Apple Pay / Google Wallet (push-provisioned) — user taps to pay anywhere VISA is accepted
1. Stellar connector inside the wallet-abstraction layer.
CryptoMate already supports Polygon, BNB Chain, and Tron. The connector adds Stellar with four pieces: keypair generation and encrypted custody (@stellar/stellar-sdk), USDC trustline setup (Circle issuer GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN), Horizon SSE streaming to detect incoming payments, and memo-based reconciliation to credit the right user. Per-user Stellar addresses use muxed accounts (M…) derived from the holding wallet, the standard pattern for custodial platforms.
2. MoneyGram Ramps SEP-24 flow.
SEP-10 challenge-response auth against MoneyGram's anchor (signed by the holding wallet), SEP-24 interactive deposit to obtain the QR/reference number, SEP-9 KYC field passing so users pre-verified by CryptoMate skip re-KYC, and a dual-detection logic (MoneyGram status completed + Horizon stream confirms USDC arrival) before crediting the user.
A more detailed technical breakdown — including code snippets, the SEP-9 ↔ CryptoMate field mapping table, the eight-step MoneyGram Ramps flow, and operational concerns (cursor persistence, fee float, sequence management, testnet → mainnet migration) — is appended at the end of this submission so the body stays readable for non-technical reviewers.
A combination of cash-in via a global agent network plus push-provisioned card on Stellar does not yet exist in the ecosystem. The funded payments-and-wallets projects each address adjacent gaps — CryptoMate is complementary to most of them rather than competing:
Project: Meru
Their focus: USDC wallet for LATAM freelancers
How CryptoMate is complementary: Serves digitally-onboarded users; CryptoMate adds the cash-economy entry point
Project: COCA.XYZ
Their focus: Non-custodial debit card + IBAN
How CryptoMate is complementary: Serves crypto-native users; CryptoMate serves users who don't yet have a digital balance
Project: Alfred Pay
Their focus: US → DR/Haiti remittance
How CryptoMate is complementary: Sender-side remittance; CryptoMate is the recipient-side spending instrument
Project: Skopa
Their focus: Multi-currency remittance wallet
How CryptoMate is complementary: Wallet-based; CryptoMate provides the card layer for spending
Project: Leaf Global
Their focus: Migrant wallet with cash-out (East Africa)
How CryptoMate is complementary: Cash-out flow; CryptoMate is the cash-in + card flow, in different corridors
Project: SurgePay
Their focus: African cross-border money platform
How CryptoMate is complementary: Remittance-focused in Africa; CryptoMate adds the card-spending pattern across LATAM
What's unique here: the user's mental model is "I gave the cashier money, I got a VISA card." That's it. No wallet, no seed phrase, no understanding of stablecoins. The blockchain is genuinely invisible. This is what's needed to reach people who will never download a crypto wallet but will absolutely use a free VISA card on their phone.
Per the Vision above, this single integration becomes available to 40+ clients across 12 countries the day it ships — each free to brand it, localize it, and monetize it for their own users without doing any Stellar work themselves.
Volume from day one. New mainnet USDC flowing through MoneyGram Ramps — measurable on-chain from the first pilot transaction.
A distribution multiplier built on a bottoms-up thesis. 40+ CryptoMate clients can route their users into the new MoneyGram-on-Stellar flow with zero additional integration work. Each one localizes it, brands it as their own, and monetizes it themselves. The grant funds one integration; it ships across an existing, self-propelled distribution network.
A new user profile. Cash-economy users in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Nigeria — markets where MoneyGram has documented on-ramp activity. These users are not migrating from another chain. They are net-new to the ecosystem.
Proof of an underexplored anchor pattern. SEP-24 anchors as the cash-in layer for card programs has not yet been demonstrated at production scale. Once shipped, the pattern is replicable by other card issuers building on Stellar.
A reusable integration artifact for other builders. The published SDK and SKILL.md (Tranche 3) make this integration available to every other Stellar team that wants to add MoneyGram cash-in to their product — a wallet, a remittance app, a competing card program — without rebuilding the SEP-10/24/9 stack. One funded integration; many downstream products able to use it.
Corridor alignment. CryptoMate's live operations in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and South Africa overlap directly with MoneyGram's top on-ramp markets. The compliance, KYC, card issuance, and local-currency rails to serve users in those countries already exist — this grant adds the Stellar deposit rail to them.
This project ships two artifacts at Tranche 3 specifically intended to be picked up by other Stellar teams:
An open-source SDK — a TypeScript / npm package that wraps the full MoneyGram-on-Stellar flow (SEP-10 auth, SEP-24 deposit initiation, SEP-9 KYC pass-through, Horizon-watcher reconciliation, dual-detection logic). MIT licensed. Any Stellar team building a card program, a wallet with cash-in, or a remittance product can drop it into their backend without rewriting the integration.
A SKILL.md for AI coding assistants — a published skill file compatible with Claude and other coding agents. A developer can ask their AI assistant "add MoneyGram cash-in to my Stellar app" and the assistant will scaffold the integration correctly using the SDK above. This is how integration patterns scale today: not through documentation that developers read, but through skills that AI assistants apply on their behalf.
CryptoMate's internal platform code (Cards product, KYC pipeline, virtual wallet, multi-jurisdiction compliance layer) remains proprietary — those pieces are the existing infrastructure this grant attaches to, not the integration work the grant funds. What the grant funds, we open up. This is not a smart-contract project, so there are no Soroban contracts in scope.
A four-month integration that turns any MoneyGram cash deposit into a tap-to-pay VISA card on Stellar — and ships it as a service that 40+ existing CryptoMate clients can launch for their users on day one.
$140.0K
Alan, CEO. Founded Lemon Cash, South America's first crypto challenger bank, scaled to 5M+ users. Earlier founded Wuabi (acquired by Coca-Cola). Has built consumer-facing financial products at the scale this project needs to reach.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanboryszanski/
Guido, CTO. 15+ years as a fintech systems architect across LATAM. Senior roles at Santander. Sr. Developer / Systems Architect on the PayPal Crypto Rollout in LATAM — bridging a global payments network with crypto settlement rails inside a regulated environment is the exact problem this grant addresses, at production scale.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guido-de-luca/
Investor: Claribay Ventures, led by Tracy Lee (formerly Product Director at both Circle and Coinbase). Circle issues USDC on Stellar — the asset at the center of this integration. Their LATAM focus aligns with the launch corridors.
CryptoMate today:
40+ clients — a mix of emerging fintechs, community leaders, entrepreneurs, and SMEs — running their own financial services on CryptoMate across 12+ countries
400,000+ end users reached
$120M+ annualized processed volume
Live local-currency operations in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, USA, Europe, UK, Hong Kong, Nigeria, South Africa
Card issuance partnerships across Asia, USA, and LATAM (already operational)
FinCEN MSB Registration #31000318247837
This is not a project searching for a market. The platform, the users, the partners, and the regulatory posture are already in place. The grant is for the Stellar layer.
Amount: $28,000 · Duration: ~5 weeks · Target: Stellar connector running end-to-end against horizon-testnet.stellar.org.
Deliverables:
1.1 — @stellar/stellar-sdk integrated into the CryptoMate backend; holding wallet keypair created with encrypted secret storage using the existing KMS pattern.
1.2 — USDC trustline established on testnet, with the transaction hash published; holding wallet funded with XLM float for base reserve and operation fees.
1.3 — Horizon streaming watcher running and persisting cursor across restarts; reconnect logic with exponential backoff.
1.4 — Memo-based reconciliation: a simulated USDC payment to the holding wallet credits the correct user's virtual balance in the database.
1.5 — Muxed-account (M…) derivation implemented for clients that require per-user Stellar addresses.
1.6 — SEP-10 authentication working against MoneyGram Sandbox; JWT obtained, cached, validated, and refreshed.
1.7 — SEP-1 stellar.toml published at https://cryptomate.me/.well-known/stellar.toml with SIGNING_KEY and ACCOUNTS entries; Stellar network added to CryptoMate's internal monitoring stack (deposit watcher liveness, fee-float balance, sequence-number alerts).
1.8 — QA, integration testing, demo recording, monitoring dashboard screenshot, and full proof-of-completion package.
Proof of completion: screen-recorded testnet demo, transaction hashes verifiable on the Stellar testnet explorer, GitHub commit references, and monitoring dashboard screenshot.
Amount: $42,000 · Duration: ~5 weeks · Target: full user journey running in MoneyGram's Sandbox environment.
Deliverables:
2.1 — SEP-24 interactive deposit initiation with correct SEP-9 field mapping (CryptoMate client_creation fields → MoneyGram KYC fields; no re-KYC for users already verified).
2.2 — Webview UI (web + mobile) rendering MoneyGram's QR code and reference number with proper styling.
2.3 — postMessage close-notification listener and transaction status polling state machine: pending_user_transfer_start → pending_external → completed / error / refunded.
2.4 — Dual-detection reconciliation logic: both MoneyGram completed status and Horizon-stream confirmation are required before crediting the user. Includes refund and error handling with proper user notification.
2.5 — Push provisioning to Apple Pay: implementation, certificate management, and Apple approval submission package.
2.6 — Push provisioning to Google Wallet: implementation and Google approval submission package.
2.7 — Admin tooling: internal dashboard for support staff to inspect pending Stellar deposits, MoneyGram transaction status, and reconciliation state for any user.
2.8 — MoneyGram production certification application package prepared and submitted (technical conformance materials only — approval timing sits with MoneyGram and is not a deliverable; see note below).
2.9 — Sandbox test runs (at least 15 successful and 5 deliberately failed) with logs; client UX sign-off.
Proof of completion: demo video walking the full user flow, Sandbox transaction logs, admin dashboard screenshots, and sign-off from at least one CryptoMate client reviewing the integration UX.
Amount: $56,000 · Duration: ~6 weeks · Target: production deployment with documented real-money transactions, plus the artifacts that make this integration reusable across the ecosystem.
3.1 — Holding wallet live on horizon.stellar.org (Networks.PUBLIC), USDC trustline funded; MoneyGram Preview environment wired to mainnet.
3.2 — MoneyGram Agent Locator API integrated into the CryptoMate UI so users can find their nearest cash-in location in-app.
3.3 — Pilot execution: at least 50 successful end-to-end mainnet transactions across three pilot corridors (Colombia, Mexico, and one of Brazil or Peru), each with verifiable Stellar transaction hashes and a card-provisioning event. Includes engineering support, monitoring, and on-call coverage during the pilot.
3.4 — Operational runbook published: Horizon watcher restart procedure, cursor recovery, fee-float monitoring, alerting thresholds, and on-call playbook.
3.5 — Post-launch monitoring report covering at least 14 days of mainnet operating data after pilot transactions begin (transaction success rate, average end-to-end time from cash deposit to card top-up, any incidents and resolutions). A 30-day version is delivered as a follow-up artifact at T+30 if mainnet is reached late in the tranche.
3.6 — Client Onboarding Kit: API documentation, integration guide, sample code, and a sandbox path so any of the 40+ clients already on CryptoMate can launch the new MoneyGram cash-in service for their users without rebuilding the integration.
3.7 — CryptoMate's own MoneyGram cash-in card launched as a reference deployment — fully under our control, this is the first live consumer-facing instance of the integration and the demo product for prospective adopters.
3.8 — Adoption signals from existing clients: at least two signed Letters of Intent (LOIs) from clients on the CryptoMate platform committing to roll out the new MoneyGram-on-Stellar flow to their users. Note: LOI signature is in our control; actual user transaction volume on third-party deployments depends on each client's own go-to-market and is therefore not included as a deliverable.
3.9 — Open-source MoneyGram-on-Stellar integration SDK: TypeScript / npm package wrapping the SEP-10 + SEP-24 + SEP-9 + Horizon-watcher flow as a reusable client. MIT-licensed. Includes README, working example, and test suite.
3.10 — SKILL.md for AI coding assistants (Claude-compatible and other coding agents) so a developer can prompt their AI assistant to scaffold the integration correctly using the SDK above.
3.11 — Public technical write-up published on the Stellar community Medium covering the SEP-9 mapping pattern and the dual-detection reconciliation approach.
3.12 — QA, end-to-end mainnet testing, final proof package.
Proof of completion: list of 50 mainnet transaction hashes verifiable on stellar.expert; published runbook; published API docs; npm package link for the SDK; GitHub link for the SKILL.md repo; published Medium post; video of a real user completing the flow; 14-day operating report; the live CryptoMate-operated MoneyGram cash-in card; and scanned copies of at least two signed client LOIs.
Alan — CEO & Co-founder. Founded Lemon Cash, One of South America's first crypto challenger banks scaled to 5M+ users — Earlier founded Wuabi, an agri-crowdfunding platform acquired by Coca-Cola. Direct operator background in launching regulated, consumer-facing fintech products across LATAM.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanboryszanski/
Guido — CTO & Co-founder. 15+ years as a fintech systems architect across LATAM. Senior roles at Santander Bank. Sr. Developer and Systems Architect on the PayPal Crypto Rollout in LATAM — bridging a global payments network with crypto settlement rails inside a regulated compliance environment, which is exactly the architectural problem this grant addresses.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guido-de-luca/
The full CryptoMate engineering organization (backend, frontend, DevOps, QA, compliance) is in place and operates the live $120M yearly-volume platform today. The grant work is executed by the same team, not contractors.
Aborysza
No other submissions.