Capital, Compliance, And Corridors: Native’s Tommy Li Reveals What Makes 24/7 Stablecoin Settlement Possible

When Mastercard announced it would add stablecoin settlement to its network this June, the pitch was simple: cards that settle intraday, on weekends, on holidays — the kind of round-the-clock movement traditional bank rails were never built to do. What the announcement didn’t explain is who actually makes that possible. Every one of those settlements needs someone holding inventory and quoting both sides of the trade at three in the morning, in any currency, while the banks are closed.

That’s the layer Tommy Li works in. As co-founder of Originaire, he runs the liquidity and settlement infrastructure that sits underneath announcements like Mastercard’s — the unglamorous machinery of pre-funded capital, regulatory licensing, and round-the-clock execution that makes “always-on” something more than a marketing line.

In this conversation, he walks through what 24/7 settlement actually requires once you get past the press release: why banks and exchanges, despite being named partners in nearly every stablecoin announcement, aren’t structurally built to do this work, and why a dedicated middle layer of liquidity providers exists to fill that gap. He also explains why Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan — not the US markets named first in Mastercard’s rollout — are where this infrastructure is already being tested at scale, and what it will take to extend that model to corridors where the regulatory groundwork doesn’t yet exist.

What does 24/7 settlement actually change for merchants and cardholders?

For the customer, there won’t be many changes at all. The approval at checkout has always c...
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