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Stablecoins have emerged as one of crypto’s clearest real-world use cases. During Cointelegraph’s recent AMA, HandlPay founder Gregor Arn said the industry has already built much of the underlying infrastructure for global digital payments. What it still has not solved is the user experience.
Rethinking Crypto Payments: AMA with HandlPay on Privacy, Stablecoins and Social Handles [Brought to you by @HandlPay] https://t.co/PCUJ8q5xSm
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) March 25, 2026
“Stablecoins are an amazing foundation,” Arn said. “But what crypto has failed to do in all this time is that the UX is super complicated.”
That gap is exactly where payments solution company HandlPay is positioning itself. The company turns social media usernames, WhatsApp numbers and other familiar identifiers into payment handles, aiming to make receiving money feel as simple as getting a text message.
The core problem
Arn traced the idea back to a frustration that has existed for years: communication became instant and borderless, but payments never caught up. People can message anyone in the world in seconds, yet sending even a small amount of money often still involves unnecessary complexity.
“You can talk to everyone,” he said, “but you can’t send five dollars.”
In Arn’s view, this problem is especially visible in small-value, cross-border payments. If the sender has to think through addresses, chains, gas fees, transfer methods or whether the recipient can even receive a given asset, the process quickly becomes too cumbersome. For sub-$100 payments, that friction often kills the transaction altogether.
Why handles matter
HandlPay’s answer is to use social identity as the payment entry point. If someone already communicates through Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp or email, Arn believes that same identifier should work as the destination for money.
“The benchmark we set from a UX perspective is how you make a payment in a coffee shop with a card: you tap and the money gets sent all the way to the merchant.”
That comparison captures HandlPay’s broader ambition. The goal is not to turn more people into crypto experts. It is to remove the need for technical knowledge from the payment flow. A sender chooses the payment method they prefer, while HandlPay handles routing and delivery behind the scenes.
Arn described the model almost like a phonebook: the platform knows which wallet and blockchain sit behind a given social handle, then takes care of the rest. “You should be able to use that username as a payment address,” the founder said.
Hiding the complexity
A major part of that system is abstracting crosschain infrastructure. Arn compared the approach to Stripe’s role in traditional payments, similar to “what Stripe does with banks.”
In practice, that means users do not need to understand how a payment gets from point A to point B. HandlPay manages the routing layer so that someone can pay in the format most convenient to them, while the recipient receives funds in the connected destination wallet.
Arn said the company is focused on handling “all the complexity that people don’t want to deal with.” For him, that is the only way crypto payments become usable beyond a niche technical audience.
Privacy for real payments
Arn also emphasized that privacy becomes much more important once crypto moves from trading into everyday consumer payments. Public blockchain transparency may be acceptable for some use cases, but daily spending is different.
“If you are making a payment in a grocery store or in a restaurant, you may not want to broadcast these transactions to the entire world.”
That is why HandlPay integrated Canton Network as a privacy layer. Arn framed privacy as a practical requirement for normal financial behavior. “Once you’ve lost privacy, it’s a big deal,” he said, arguing that many users do not fully realize the tradeoff until that information is exposed. Cash historically offered that by default. Digital payments, especially on public blockchains, often do not.
Where adoption could happen first
While the model has clear implications for freelancers and international peer-to-peer transfers, Arn identified social commerce as one of HandlPay’s strongest near-term use cases.
Millions of people already sell products, services or access through social platforms, but the payment step still often happens through awkward back-and-forth in direct messages. For Arn, that is a major opportunity. If commerce already happens around social identity, payments should fit naturally into the same flow.
He also pointed to creator engagement and small-value reward distribution as promising areas, especially where Web2 audiences can be reached without forcing them through a complicated crypto onboarding process.
HandlPay’s broader thesis is simple: payments should work more like messaging and less like infrastructure management. Arn’s view is that the next phase of crypto adoption will not be driven by adding more features for power users, but by stripping away the complexity that still keeps ordinary users out. If that shift happens, paying someone on a username or WhatsApp number could eventually feel as natural as sending them a DM.
Disclaimer.This content is part of a paid partnership. The text below is a sponsored article that is not part of Cointelegraph.com editorial content. The material is written by our advertorial team and has undergone editorial review to ensure clarity and relevance, it may not reflect the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.com. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Disclosure.
