Breaking the Settlement Loop

There’s a strange paradox in the world of modern finance: we have more FinTechs than ever, more funding, more apps, more slogans about inclusion — and yet, the people who need real financial transformation most are still locked out.

Especially in the Global South.

Why? Because FinTechs aren’t building something new for the most part. And that's not a critisism.

They’re borrowing the same infrastructure, the same rails, the same antiquated compliance logic that legacy banks use — the very same system that excluded billions in the first place. They add a nicer front end, maybe an AI chatbot, maybe an onboarding process that feels sleek. But underneath, the core logic hasn’t changed. The process still flows through the same settlement bottlenecks, the same SWIFT-based corridors, the same bias-laden KYC frameworks.

If you’re using the same pipes, you’re delivering the same water — no matter how shiny your taps are

I’ve seen this again and again. A new startup sets out to revolutionise remittances in Africa, but as they have no other choice than to rely on aTier-1 bank in Europe for final settlement they have one arm tied behind their back. That bank won’t approve accounts from certain jurisdictions. Or if it does, it does so under punitive conditions. Suddenly, the whole value proposition collapses under the weight of the system it claimed to disrupt. This then stifles the motivation of these great innovators from across the global south.

This is the loop. You build something new, but it depends on something old. And the old thing doesn’t like change.

And I don’t say this as an outsider. I’ve been deep inside that loop. I’ve spent years trying to thread the needle — building innovation while navigating legacy choke points. It’s exhausting. And it’s humbling. Because eventually you realise that unless you own the rail, you don’t control the train.

What’s needed isn’t a better interface. It’s sovereignty.

We need to build financial infrastructure that doesn’t rely on Western settlement rails to function. Infrastructure that can process, clear, and settle transactions across borders without hitting a wall of suspicion every time the originator’s address isn’t in London or Berlin.

This isn’t about bypassing regulation — it’s about localising trust. About creating jurisdiction-specific logic that’s compliant but not frankly neo-colonial. About crafting liquidity pools and digital identity systems that reflect the shape of the communities they serve.

Of course, this is harder. Building infrastructure is messy. It’s expensive. It’s slow. It doesn’t make for sexy VC pitch decks. But it’s the only way out of the loop for the global south.

Until we break the dependence on old-world financial plumbing, no amount of user acquisition or UI/UX optimisation is going to change the fact that billions of people are being treated as second-class participants in the global economy.

This is why I’ve come to believe that the future belongs to those willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of building from the root — not just building for markets, but with them. Not just inserting people into existing systems, but designing systems around them.

If you’re serious about financial inclusion, you can’t rent trust. You have to build it. You have to own it. And you have to make sure the system that runs beneath your app actually understands the people you claim to serve.

Otherwise, all you’ve done is put a new face on an old exclusion.

My writing on this website forms a small part of my wider journey — a lifelong fascination with understanding and exploring how culture, technology, and consciousness shape the world we live in, and a search for evidence that far more connects us than separates us.

Through my work at Tintra Group and The Tintra Foundation, incredible teams are turning that exploration into practice — reimagining finance and development for a multipolar world.