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As the internet made information global and permissionless, payments have remained trapped behind banks, payment processors, jurisdictional rules, delayed settlements, account approvals, and platform-level restrictions. For online businesses, creators, developers, and emerging agentic commerce, the ability to accept money is still far less open than the ability to publish content or build software.
In this episode of Untangling Web3, Siddharth Menon, founder of PayRam and co-founder of WazirX, explores how permissionless commerce can reshape the future of payments, stablecoin adoption, and blockchain-based financial infrastructure. The conversation covers why traditional payment systems create friction for merchants, how self-hosted crypto payment gateways unlock new forms of online commerce, and why the next wave of blockchain utility may come from payments rather than speculation.
Key Points Discussed:
- Why Online Payments Are Still Broken: Traditional payments remain opaque, slow, and heavily permissioned. Merchants depend on payment service providers, acquirers, banks, and compliance processes that can delay settlement, freeze funds, reject accounts, or disrupt business operations when volume increases. In a borderless tech economy, payments still behave like a fragmented, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction system.
- Permissionless Commerce and Self-Hosted Payment Gateways: PayRam is built around the idea that merchants should be able to run their own payment gateway, similar to running a WordPress site. Instead of signing up, completing KYC, or relying on a centralized processor to custody funds, merchants can accept blockchain payments directly into their own wallets, using self-custody infrastructure designed to reduce complexity and key-management risk.
- Stablecoins, Programmable Payments, and Agentic Commerce: Crypto payments are evolving beyond “send and receive” into programmable commerce: escrow, automated subscriptions, campaign payouts, multi-chain stablecoin payments, and agent-friendly checkout flows. PayRam supports payment links across networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and Tron, with stablecoins positioned as a practical bridge between blockchain infrastructure and everyday commerce.
Permissionless commerce represents a major shift in how payments, tech platforms, and blockchain infrastructure can work together. Instead of treating crypto as another payment option inside the existing processor model, self-hosted payment systems give merchants direct control over how they accept, manage, and settle funds.
As stablecoins become more widely used and AI agents begin spinning up digital services, stores, and automated workflows, payments infrastructure needs to become faster, more open, and easier to integrate. Blockchain-based commerce offers a path toward that future: global payments without unnecessary intermediaries, programmable money for new business models, and a more permissionless internet economy.
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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at theuntanglingweb3podcast@gmail.com.
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The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.
