TOKEN2049 Singapore still has the Ferrari at the entrance and the trading booths with robot dogs. But most of the conversations our team had on the floor and at side events were about something less flashy: moving money between regulated institutions, across borders, using stablecoins.

We spoke with exchanges, PSPs, custodians, infrastructure providers, banks and a few groups you wouldn't expect at a crypto conference. Five themes came up again and again.

1. Stablecoin payments set the agenda

Trading still had the biggest booths, but payments drove most of the serious conversations. Many of the PSPs we met are already adding stablecoins to their offering or integrating them more deeply into existing products. The interest was concrete: cross-border transfers, merchant settlement, treasury movement between entities.

2. The buyer list keeps getting longer

Alongside exchanges and VASPs, we met payment service providers, trading firms and other financial businesses that are moving into digital assets. Many are acquiring or applying for licenses to do it, with Singapore, Dubai and Bahrain coming up most often. Their business models are changing, and so are their compliance obligations.

Licensing is shaping the conversation. Dubai had its own pavilion with VARA represented, and a steady stream of companies stopped by to ask about setting up regulated digital asset businesses there. Most of them are still deciding on their infrastructure, which is the right time to think about compliance.

3. A license is only half of it

This was the clearest pattern of the week. Firms are working out that getting a license is the first step, not the last. Once licensed, they still need to connect with the other regulated entities they'll transact with, verify who those counterparties are, and handle different rules in every jurisdiction they touch.

We heard a version of this from banks that had started with a white-label setup. Outsourcing the technology didn't outsource the regulatory responsibility. They still own their compliance stack, and they still need to know who is on the other side of every transfer.

That is a reachability problem as much as a compliance one. A Travel Rule network is only as useful as the share of your counterparties that are actually on it and actually respond. Notabene's network connects thousands of counterparties across more than 100 jurisdictions, and every institution that joins makes it more useful for the next one.

4. Banks are buying the whole stack

Banks are now talking to vendors across the full compliance stack, the way exchanges did a few cycles ago: KYC, custody, analytics and Travel Rule. Among more mature firms, the Travel Rule is no longer seen as a blocker. It's a solved part of the stack that has to work every time.

Several people told us they value working with a team that stays focused on that problem, especially conservative institutions that have watched crypto companies change direction every market cycle.

5. Institutional adoption in APAC is early, but real

Use cases range from tokenized deposits to interbank transfers through stablecoin pilots. Product-market fit isn't settled yet, and banks are moving carefully. They're following regulator guidance closely and paying attention to which stablecoins they're comfortable holding and settling in.

Hong Kong is a good example of where this is going. Last week we announced that Notabene is providing Travel Rule compliance and transaction authorization for distributors of Anchorpoint's HKDAP, the HKMA-licensed Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. Distributors get real-time counterparty verification before a transfer settles, the same standard institutions expect from a wire.

One more thing: agents

A few exchanges were demoing agentic AI for trading, and banks are starting to use AI internally. As software starts initiating payments on someone's behalf, the counterparty question gets a new layer: who is the agent acting for, and what is it allowed to do? Lana Schwartzman covers this in Who KYCs the Agent?

What this means for teams building now

Many of the PSPs and financial institutions we met are still choosing their technology and compliance infrastructure. If that's you, plan for the second half of the license early: how you'll reach your counterparties, verify them and authorize each transfer before it settles, in every jurisdiction you operate in.

We'll be at Money20/20 in Las Vegas next week, then Merge Madrid and Ripple Swell in New York. If you met us in Singapore, or wish you had, get in touch.