[Coinfest Asia] ‘We Let Them Get to 5 Bips’: How Coins.ph is Undercutting Wise and Legacy Remittance Giants

Wei Zhou isn’t sugarcoating the state of retail crypto. “Deader than dead,” he jokes.

Over the past year, as retail speculation dried up, consumer-facing exchanges had to figure out how to survive. For Coins.ph, the answer was to completely pivot into backend financial infrastructure.

Speaking with BitPinas at Coinfest Asia in Bali, the Coins.ph CEO explained how the Philippine exchange is aiming and now transforming itself into an institutional payment engine, a move that now drives nearly $100 million in daily transaction volume.

This is an interview conducted during Coinfest Asia 2026. Check out more Coinfest coverage here. For more interviews, click here.

Pivoting from a ‘Deader Than Dead’ Retail Market

“You take what the market gives you,” Zhou said.

“When the market gives you lemons, you got to figure out how to make lemonade out of it. The retail crypto market over the last 12 months has been going from bad to worse to, I joke around, ‘deader than dead.’ If B2C is dead, you got to figure out how to get into the B2B world.”

While everyday retail traders stepped back from speculative tokens, cross-border businesses, payment aggregators, and remittance platforms leaned heavily into stablecoins. They needed to move funds faster and cheaper, bypassing the bottlenecks of traditional banking.

For Coins.ph, this meant leaning into the inefficiencies of the Philippine payment system. “The banks don’t talk to each other, the banks don’t have APIs,” Zhou pointed out. By building out B2B settlement and FX trading rails, Coins.ph filled the gaps that legacy institutions left open.

The $100 Million Daily Volume and the Takedown of Wise

This pivot paid off quickly.

Zhou revealed that over the last couple of weeks (the interview was conducted on August 22, 2026), he said Coins.ph has been processing close to $100 million a day in USDT and USDC to Philippine Pesos.

“On the weekends, it’s higher because the banks are closed,” he explained. “All these vendors that use us, they use us more on the weekend because they can’t get FX from the banks.”

He also took aim at previous fintech disruptors like Wise, noting that while Wise revolutionized remittances, it still relies on traditional banking rails that require pre-funding and close after hours.

“Wise goes around saying 30% of remittances go through them. But Wise can’t get lower than 40 to 50 bips [basis points], whereas we let them get to 5 bips,” Zhou said. “There’s a wave of companies that’s gonna disrupt even the previous disruptors.”

Tokenized US Stocks and the OFW Remittance Dream

Contrary to the hype, Zhou noted that bottom-up, retail demand for stablecoins in Southeast Asia is actually lower than in regions like Latin America or Africa. Because SEA economies and currencies are relatively stable, a lingering effect of the Asian Financial Crisis, people don’t need stablecoins just to preserve their wealth.

Instead, the demand in the Philippines is driven by a lack of local investment options. “None of our banks offer US stocks,” Zhou said. “Sophisticated investors… just go buy some stablecoins and then go buy US stocks, the tokenized version of them. Without stablecoins, those rails would not be available.”

He also described how crypto can actually solve the age-old OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) remittance dream, cutting out the middlemen who extract value at every step. He pointed to Filipino seafarers, who have 80% of their pay automatically routed through local associations and banks, losing money to FX spreads along the way.

With crypto, a relative in the US can send USDC directly to a Coins wallet. Zhou said converting that to Pesos on Coins costs just 3 bips, and cashing out via InstaPay is a flat 5 pesos. “If you’re a company and you’re not using Coins to move money in and out of the Philippines, you’re basically giving margin away,” he said.

“Hello, We’re Here”: A Message to Local Banks

Zhou also expressed some frustration that local banks are looking abroad for stablecoin partnerships instead of working with local VASPs. He pointed to recent news of local banks partnering with American companies for stablecoin services.

“I’m just like, ‘Hello! We’re here!’” Zhou laughed. “You don’t have to go to an American company. When that American company sends USDC to the Philippines, they still have to settle it into Pesos through a VASP. We have the products and services. My goal is to give every Filipino bank account holder a USDC or USDT address that they can receive money in. Our APIs are ready.”

A Global Clearinghouse

Looking beyond the Philippines, Zhou sees Coins.ph as a global digital clearinghouse.

The company, the executive said, has been securing payment and crypto licenses in Tier-1 regions and key emerging markets. They already support Thai Baht, Brazilian Real, and US Dollar settlements, and plan to add more SEA currencies by the end of the year.

Coins.ph is Launching a Crypto-Backed Card

Back home, the company is waiting on its Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from the SEC. “They came out with the rules in January of 2025, but nobody has it yet,” Zhou noted. Once approved, it will allow for advanced yield-bearing stablecoin products.

Coins.ph is also planning to launch a locally issued crypto card by the end of the year. Zhou said many of the crypto cards currently flooding the Philippine market are issued out of Hong Kong or Singapore, hiding terrible 2% to 3% FX surcharges.

“When you don’t have a card for the first time, you don’t really care about paying a 3% FX surcharge. But once you look under the hood, you’re like, ‘Holy crap!’” Zhou said. “How do all these card companies make money? Rates. We are gonna be a Filipino issuer, so our users are gonna get the best rates.”

A Maturing Industry

Reflecting on the journey since acquiring Coins.ph from Indonesian unicorn Gojek (now GoTo), Zhou sees an industry that has finally grown up.

“When we bought Coins, crypto was still like a raging teenager,” he said. “Now, crypto has fully matured into adulthood. And we need to basically play by the rules. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world, crypto rules and regulations are coming down.”

With formal frameworks now active across Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, Coins.ph’s bet on strict local compliance and heavy-lifting B2B infrastructure might just be the blueprint for how crypto survives its retail winter.

Of course, the next question will be –> is the crypto winter still going to last, or is it ending?

This article is published on BitPinas: [Coinfest Asia] ‘We Let Them Get to 5 Bips’: How Coins.ph is Undercutting Wise and Legacy Remittance Giants

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