WeFi Group CEO Maksym Sakharov: Crypto’s Future Depends on Payments

For most of its life, crypto has been sold through movement. Prices surged, prices crashed, and each cycle promised that mass adoption was finally close. Maksym Sakharov, Group CEO of WeFi, argues that this obsession with speculation brought attention, but also kept the industry looking in the wrong direction for too long.

Maksym believes the next stage will be decided somewhere less glamorous but far more useful: payments. That view lines up with the size of the market itself. Payments revenue could reach $3 trillion by 2029, and the average cost of sending remittances globally is still 6.49% of the amount sent.

The market has spent too long chasing noise

Sakharov says the sector spent years chasing institutional money from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Though his point is not that institutional interest was a mistake. It is that the pursuit of ETFs, regulated custody, and high-net-worth capital pulled focus away from the places where crypto was already being used to solve real problems.

That reading is also closer to what gave birth to crypto in the first place. Bitcoin presented the idea as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, built so online payments could move directly from one party to another without a financial institution in the middle. Sakharov’s view is that the industry drifted away from that foundation when volatility and trading became the dominant story.

That argument carries more weight today because adoption is not a purely Western story anymore. Researchers track countries with distinct use cases taking hold, highlighting markets such as India, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Ukraine. Drivers there include remittances, savings, commerce, and investment.

Maksym Sakharov’s view is that the most meaningful growth is happening where people need money to move cleanly across borders, or need a more stable place to hold value. He points to freelancers, small merchants, and households using digital assets for remittances, payments, and savings in unstable economies. And he frames that activity as a sign of maturity.

Payments are where utility shows up

That is why Sakharov puts cross-border payments at the center of the conversation. In his recent interview, he said traditional transfers can take three to six business days and may cost upwards of 5% to 10% once several intermediary banks are involved. Stablecoin-based transfers, he argued, can cut both the delay and the cost sharply.

The institutions are moving in the same direction, saying stablecoins have real potential to make international payments faster and cheaper, especially for cross-border transfers and remittances. However policymakers still need to manage risks around capital flows, transparency, and financial stability.

Sakharov’s version is more grounded in daily behavior. He says people should not need to understand blockchain to benefit from it. If money arrives faster, costs less to send, and can be spent without friction, the technology has done its job.

That is a useful way to think about crypto in 2026. For years, the industry asked people to believe first and use later. Payments invert that logic. People do not need a theory of digital assets to send money home, pay a contractor abroad, or protect savings from a weak local currency.

Familiar rails matter more than crypto slang

WeFi’s pitch is built around that idea. On its website, the company describes its product as a deobanking platform that combines global payments, yield, ATM withdrawals, and non-custodial control. Sakharov says the interface should feel cleaner than a modern banking app, with the technical complexity kept behind the scenes.

Maksym also says the model depends on stablecoin on- and off-ramps, distributed custody, and compliance designed into the platform from the start. That last point is central to his argument. He doesn’t see compliance as a brake on adoption, but as part of the product itself, because users trust systems that feel both simple and safe.

The company has reinforced that payments focus with senior talent. In November 2025, WeFi hired former Visa executive Michael Batuev as global head of payments to help expand its infrastructure across Europe and Asia–Pacific. Batuev’s background in mobile, contactless, and peer-to-peer payments gives that move a clear strategic logic.

Adoption arrives through ordinary transactions

Sakharov makes a point that many crypto executives still resist. Mainstream adoption, in his view, will not come from crypto-native spending alone. It will come when digital assets are used for bills, payroll, subscriptions, and other routine financial tasks that people barely think about once they work.

That helps explain why he describes WeFi’s own growth in practical terms. In January, the platform had passed 150,000 users across more than 80 countries. Maksym linked that traction to demand for borderless tools for payments, savings, and day-to-day money management. People signed up because the tools solved daily problems.

Market attention has followed, even if that is not the heart of the story. As of the time of publication, WFI’s live market cap was at about $190 million. The number will move with the market, but the more important point is that product usage and token economics are still tightly linked in crypto businesses.

Sakharov’s larger claim is that crypto has already spent enough time proving it can attract attention. The harder task now is proving it can behave like money. That means settlement that works, interfaces people trust, and compliance built in.

If that shift happens, the industry will not need to keep selling a future that always seems one cycle away. It will have something better: a financial tool people use because it helps them move, save, and spend money with less friction. Payments may sound mundane next to crypto’s louder narratives, but that is exactly why they matter.

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