Businesses are changing how they handle financial transactions as technology reshapes customer expectations. Organizations are looking for simpler ways to manage money and improve the payment experience. Stabledrop is part of this shift, helping businesses navigate an increasingly connected financial landscape. Its approach reflects the need for practical solutions that fit modern business operations. As companies expand into new markets, reliable transaction processes become essential to sustainable growth.
Edinburgh-based Stabledrop lets buyers and sellers lock funds against agreed terms in seconds, at less than the cost of a card payment, without anyone holding the money. Its founders explain why protection should be the default, not the exception.
A manufacturer in Glasgow needs to pay a new supplier in India £40,000 up front. If the goods never arrive, the money is gone. A supplier in Boston ships an order and waits 90 days to be paid, effectively lending to a customer far larger than itself. Every day, businesses everywhere take one of these two gambles because, until now, there has been no cheap, affordable, and fast way to avoid them.
Stabledrop was built to remove that gamble. Now live, it gives every payment, from a £20 purchase to a seven-figure order, the kind of protection that until now only large deals could afford.
Reimagining Global Payments
Most payments today fall into two categories: card transactions and business-to-business bank transfers. Both were designed around the technology of their time, leaving structural gaps that another payment product alone cannot resolve.
Card payments emerged before people carried networked computers in their pockets. The solution was to store a 16-digit card number on a plastic card which retailers’ terminals read and transmitted through intermediaries to transfer funds. Building this infrastructure, including legal agreements and marketing, was expensive. Today, its profitability gives established providers little incentive to change it. Consequently, the system remains:
- Slow: Funds can take days to reach sellers.
- Expensive: Transaction fees can reach around 3%.
- Insecure: Card details are shared with merchants, creating vulnerabilities that an entire fraud-prevention industry now works to address.
- Exclusionary: Merchants must pass credit checks because intermediaries bear chargeback risks. Smaller businesses, new entrants, and higher-risk sectors often face higher fees or complete exclusion.
B2B payments present another challenge. Buyers either pay upfront and hope goods arrive as agreed, (Stabledrop calls this “pay and pray”), or sellers deliver first and wait weeks or months for payment. Both arrangements leave one party extending credit to the other, creating risk when relationships are unfamiliar or access to cash is unequal.
Traditional Escrow addresses this but arrangements involve delays, paperwork, and high costs, making them impractical for everyday purchases and smaller transactions. Consumers will not engage lawyers for routine purchases, and businesses cannot justify additional fees and conditional-release paperwork for every order.
Stabledrop developed infrastructure rather than another payment product. Its model uses smart contracts on public blockchain networks to hold funds securely through code instead of a custodian. This reduces custody-related costs and administrative processes, replacing much of the paperwork with predefined contractual rules. Funds remain secured until both parties’ agreed conditions are met, with transactions arranged in seconds at a fraction of the usual cost of escrow. In this way Stabledrop delivers the protected system that earlier generations of technology could not.
Built for Platforms and AI Agents
Stabledrop is designed to be plugged in, not just used. Developers can add a protected checkout to a website with a plugin or a single line of code, or use the API to build protected payments into their own platform, marketplace or banking app. Whichever route a payment takes in, the same protection sits behind it.
It was also built for AI agents. Any AI chatbot can use the free, publicly listed MCP. This means they can set up a protected payment on a user’s behalf and pay any email address rather than a wallet. The agent never holds the user’s keys, and only the named buyer can raise a dispute, so a person always keeps the final say. Every payment returns a signed receipt that anyone can check. As more buying moves to software, that combination of automation and a human veto is what makes agent payments safe to use.
Trust Infrastructure
Speed matters, but it is not what ultimately enables strangers to trade. They need confidence that buyers will receive what they paid for and sellers will be paid for what they deliver.
Conventionally, this confidence depends on established relationships, reputation, or a legal system both parties can rely on. Across borders and industries, these assurances are often absent. Escrow enables parties to transact safely without needing to trust each other, as funds remain secured until agreed conditions are met.
Stabledrop builds on this principle, making the speed, cost and administrative burden practical across all transactions. Buyers and sellers agree on terms when setting up a payment, smart contracts hold and release funds once those conditions are fulfilled. If disputes arise, an automated escalation process including AI models and rule based decisions helps both parties reach a fair outcome. Stabledrop neither holds the funds nor decides who receives them.
This fundamentally changes how trust is established. Rather than relying solely on the other party, a bank, or an unfamiliar foreign legal system, both sides can review the rules beforehand and know they will be applied consistently.
Accessibility is equally important. The core functionality provides simplicity and protection so only 2 email addresses, an amount, currency and payout date are required for any of the different methods suited to users’ needs::
- Simple P2P / B2B setup in a UI form
- AI assistants: Users can establish a payment by asking their preferred AI chatbot, using Stabledrop’s freely available MCP.
- Developers: A freely accessible API enables platforms to integrate payment protection into their own checkout processes or workflows.
- E-commerce: A protected checkout can be added to any online store with a plugin or a single line of code.
- In person: A QR code generator supports point-of-sale transactions.
For those who prefer verification over assurances, Stabledrop makes its smart contracts publicly accessible. Users can examine the source code on GitHub or directly on the blockchain, so it is easy to use an AI assistant to review and check them. They can also execute a real transaction for a fraction of a cent before committing significant funds. Stabledrop encourages independent verification rather than asking users to rely on trust alone.
Trust Through Transparency
Non-custodial infrastructure establishes an important distinction between facilitating transactions and controlling the underlying funds. Stabledrop’s approach to custody, control, conditional fund release, and dispute resolution is guided by three core principles:
1. The parties define the rules, not Stabledrop.
Buyers and sellers agree on the terms when establishing a protected payment. The smart contract enforces those terms; Stabledrop cannot determine how or when funds move.
2. No party should hold unnecessary power.
Stabledrop never takes custody of funds, accesses users’ wallet keys, or exercises administrative control over money held in a contract. Each contract is created for a single transaction and funded by the buyer without even needing to connect their wallet to the system. Once live, the contract cannot be altered by Stabledrop
3. Transparency and independent access are essential.
Stabledrop provides software that simplifies smart-contract interactions. Every action remains possible directly on the blockchain without the Stabledrop tools. This ensures that even if Stabledrop ceased operating, users could still complete or resolve their transactions.
These principles also guide dispute resolution. When a payment is disputed, funds are frozen, preventing either party from withdrawing them. Both parties explain their positions and propose a division of funds, ranging from a full refund to full payment. They can revise their proposals until an agreement triggers automatic contract execution. Most disputes should conclude at this stage. All disputes are resolved when two of the three voters (buyer, seller and a third voter) agree.
If buyer and seller can’t agree, the 3rd voter is asked to vote. The default 3rd voter is the Stabledrop system, which escalates through layers until it forms a vote it can justify. Layer 1 is predetermined rules, layer 2 is an AI model. If even the AI can’t justify a vote, the system automatically resigns and advises both parties how to appoint a professional arbitrator. Additionally, at any point during the process, the buyer and seller can appoint a 3rd voter they agree on.
Embedding Trust into Every Transaction
When transaction rules are embedded in a smart contract, a protected payment can be established within seconds at less than half the cost of a card payment. It protects both parties from the start. Buyers and sellers agree on the terms, and the contract holds funds until those conditions are met. If a disagreement arises, the dispute process is already built into the agreement, with published rules visible before either party commits. There is no need to gather paperwork, contact a bank, or initiate legal proceedings. Operating within agreed rules reduces much of the cost and delay associated with enforcing agreements.
Stabledrop does not challenge existing financial relationships. It works alongside banks, allowing users to keep them involved if they choose. The difference lies in where trust resides. Rather than relying on an intermediary to act fairly when problems arise, both parties can review the rules before paying and know they will be enforced. Because no trust is required for payment and no lines of credit need to be extended, businesses can do more business with people they have never met.
Simplifying Blockchain Payment Adoption
Blockchain should remain invisible to users. Just as people use email without understanding internet protocols, payments should work without requiring technical knowledge. Blockchain matters for the speed, lower costs, and tamper-resistant protection it enables, while users should experience a simple payment process.
Stabledrop removes unnecessary steps to make adoption easier. Getting started takes seconds, including wallet setup if needed. Creating a protected payment requires buyer and seller email addresses, an amount, a currency, and a date. There are no network fees to manage or technical decisions to make. Payments can be created through a short form, an API integrated into existing platforms, or any AI assistant using Stabledrop’s permissionless MCP plugin. This is simpler, faster and cheaper than bank transfers and conventional escrow.
Recipients do not require an account prior to receiving a payment. They are emailed the payment terms, can see when and how funds will be released, and need no technical knowledge. It also fits into existing business workflows, working alongside banks and current payment tools rather than replacing them. The goal is to make protected payments a natural improvement to familiar processes, not another system a business must learn.
Unlocking SME Working Capital
Late payment is not merely an administrative issue; it is a credit problem. When a small business delivers goods and waits 60 or 90 days for payment, it effectively lends to its customer, often a much larger company, for free. That money remains unavailable for stock, wages, or growth. Since payment is only promised, borrowing against it is often costly.
A protected payment changes that promise. When the buyer funds the payment upfront, the money already exists and is held against agreed terms. The seller waits for a date, not a promise. Each protected payment becomes a ‘pre-funded receivable’: a known amount payable on a known date unless a dispute arises.
This changes the economics. A pre-funded receivable carries less risk than a conventional invoice, making it easier and cheaper to sell for cash. Stabledrop has built the tools to let liquidity providers (LPs) purchase future payments from sellers at a discount. This replicates invoice factoring, but with important differences:
- Traditional lenders must account for buyer non-payment risk and assess the seller’s creditworthiness. With Stabledrop, funds already sit in the contract. The remaining risk concerns disputes over goods or services, not whether the money exists. Providers determine their returns through the discount offered without pricing in conventional credit risk.
- The greatest opportunity lies in access. Invoice finance remains difficult for small businesses due to high minimum transaction sizes, restrictive credit checks, and slow, paperwork-heavy processes. Just as Stabledrop’s protected payments makes protection viable for a £20 purchase, it can make financing smaller invoices faster and more affordable, as well. For businesses most affected by late payments, this turns waiting for cash into choosing when to receive it.
- The LP creating an offer, paying for it and the seller accepting it and receiving the funds takes a few seconds. The LP collects the payment and any agreed residual is returned to the seller – the whole process is automatic.
The common challenge across use cases, from B2C commerce to B2B relationships involving suppliers and buyers, is conditional payment: ensuring funds move only when agreed conditions are met. A consumer purchasing from an unfamiliar online seller, a manufacturer paying a new overseas supplier, and a business booking a venue a month ahead all face the same concern: what happens if a payment is made but the other party fails to deliver? Transaction size and customer type may differ, but the underlying problem remains the same.
This principle shapes Stabledrop’s architecture. Developed by Conduit-UCPI, Stabledrop is built on Universal Conditional Payments Infrastructure (UCPI), the core technology powering the platform. Seller payment requests, buyer-initiated payments, the web interface, API, AI assistant access, and business and peer-to-peer payments are different entry points to the same system. This approach is deliberate: solving conditional payments effectively through one infrastructure is more valuable than developing separate products for each market.
Broad technical capabilities do not require an equally broad initial market focus. Stabledrop prioritizes areas where the need is already clear, starting with businesses that pay upfront and rely on suppliers to deliver as agreed, ‘pay-and-pray’ or use escrow but face high costs and delays. These customers already understand the problem and need a more effective way to address it.
Rethinking Payment Infrastructure
Stablecoins are moving out of crypto trading and into everyday finance. That raises a question: if money can now move in seconds for a fraction of a penny, why does paying for something essentially work the same way it did 40 years ago?? A card payment passes through several companies, each taking a cut. The merchant waits days for the money and loses around 3% along the way. A bank transfer is cheaper, but once it’s sent it’s hard to get back, so the buyer carries all the risk. Card disputes (‘chargebacks’) lean the other way: the merchant often loses, and pays a fee whatever the outcome. Merchants tolerate both, not because they work well, but because everyone else uses them.
Stablecoins change more than speed. Money that settles in seconds, at any hour, to anyone with an email address removes the cut-off times and correspondent banks that slow trade down today. Because each Stabledrop payment carries its own terms, the payment and the paperwork become the same thing: when funds are released, everyone already knows what they were for, and the record can’t be edited after the fact. And because the contracts run on an open network, a bank’s app, a marketplace checkout or an AI agent can all use the same protection without negotiating access to it. As stablecoins become more available that matters: a digital dollar, pound, or euro is only as useful as what people can safely do with it.
The market is already shifting. Mastercard’s agreement to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, following Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, shows that leading payment companies increasingly view stablecoins as core infrastructure rather than an experiment. The question is no longer whether stablecoins will enter mainstream payments, but what will be built on top of them.
Stabledrop challenges three conventional assumptions directly.
Assumption #1: Disputes require a central intermediary.
Today, when something goes wrong, a card network or payment processor makes the decision, merchants face penalties regardless of the outcome. Disputes in Stabledrop payments are resolved fairly between both parties under pre-agreed rules, escalation tiers, including AI assessment of evidence, and professional arbitration, when buyer and seller cannot agree.
Assumption #2: Buyer protection requires delaying seller payments.
Merchants routinely wait days for their money in the name of fraud prevention. With Stabledrop’s protected payments, buyers’ funds are committed upfront, and sellers are paid once the agreed conditions are met. This protects buyers without delaying sellers unnecessarily.
Assumption #3: Protected payments depend on creditworthiness.
Merchantsaccepting cards must pass credit checks to receive payments(!) because card networks assume chargeback risk. When funds are secured in a Stabledrop smart-contract there is no third party holding that risk. Payment protection can therefore become accessible regardless of a business’s size or establishment.
The same principle applies to business credit. Small suppliers should not have to extend unsecured loans to large customers or surrender around 3% of every sale when cheaper, safer alternatives can ensure timely payment.
Overcoming Barriers to Mainstream Adoption
At its current stage, Stabledrop identifies adoption, rather than technology, as its greatest strategic challenge. The core platform is operational: protected payments can be established and settled, and dispute resolution is live. The main challenge is convincing businesses unfamiliar with stablecoins and buyers accustomed to card payments or bank transfers to embrace a new approach. This requires education, trust, and distribution more than engineering.
Accessing stablecoins remains more difficult than it should be in the UK. The regulatory direction is positive, but the practical experience has yet to catch up. In the US, many barriers have eased, and Stabledrop sees noticeably less hesitation among potential customers. Turning an innovative product into lasting infrastructure depends largely on partnerships with banks, payment providers and platforms that can offer protected payments to the customers they already serve, and on making it simple to pay and be paid in pounds, dollars or euros, so that users need not think about stablecoins at all.
Infrastructure earns trust through consistent performance over time. Stabledrop’s technology provides an initial advantage, but sustained adoption will determine whether it becomes enduring financial infrastructure.
Shaping Future Payments
Stabledrop says the next generation of global digital payments will be shaped by three fundamental shifts.
1. Money is programmable.
Payments as per Stabledrop incorporate their own rules, including when funds are released, under what conditions, and how disputes are handled. Today, these processes rely on contracts, paperwork, and back-office systems. Stabledrop embeds this logic directly into the payment.
2. Protection becomes the standard, not the exception.
Currently, protected payments are largely reserved for high-value transactions, while most everyday payments rely on a “pay and pray” approach. When protection costs less than card payments and takes miliseconds to create, there is little reason for transactions to go without it.
3. Software handles more economic transactions.
AI agents are increasingly buying and selling on behalf of individuals and businesses. As machines transact with other machines, they will need reliable rules rather than trust built through years of relationships, with a human keeping the veto – Stabledrop’s MCP provides this today.
Stabledrop is designed for this future. Its underlying Universal Conditional Payments Infrastructure makes programmable money accessible to any business without requiring coding skills or blockchain knowledge. It supports transactions involving goods and services between businesses, consumers, individuals, and increasingly, AI agents veto capability.
Stabledrop wants to make protected payments the standard, offering a simpler, cheaper alternative to cards that treats both parties fairly. Over time, Stabledrop also envisions every protected payment becoming a means for suppliers to access financing on fairer terms. This is how a payments product becomes infrastructure: when businesses stop viewing it as an alternative and begin relying on it as the standard way to transact. Businesses can already experience this approach at stabledrop.me, where a protected payment can be set up in seconds using only an email address. A purchase from an unfamiliar supplier offers a practical starting point.
Stabledrop at a glance
- Live: protected payments and dispute resolution are running on the Blockchain, with real transactions.
- Ways in: web form, email, API, e-commerce checkout, QR code and AI assistants.
- Cost: a flat fee of less than half a typical card payment, with no set-up or monthly fees.
- Backed by: a £50,000 Future Payments Challenge grant from the Centre of Excellence in Digital Trust.
- Team: Skyscanner, JPMorgan and venture capital.
- Try it: send a real protected payment for a fraction of a cent at stabledrop.me.
To better understand Stabledrop’s vision, strategy, and future direction, we spoke to its three co-founders.
Insights from Charlie Pank, CEO and Founder
Charlie’s career has spanned traditional finance and deep engineering from devops on JPMorgan’s London trading floor, to Senior Principal Engineer at Skyscanner, large-scale technology platforms, Web3, smart contracts, and independently building complete products. His experience across infrastructure and product layers has highlighted the limitations of traditional payment architecture that now shape Stabledrop’s technical philosophy and long-term scalability decisions.
Traditional payments remain flawed:
- Retail payments are insecure, expensive, slow, and rely on intermediaries, requiring credit risk assessment just to accept payments.
- B2B payments are either ‘pay-and-pray’ or depend on trust and unsecured lines of credit, often extended by those least able to fund them.
Current technology can solve these problems. The challenge is delivering solutions to businesses and retail users in ways they can understand and adopt, while ensuring security and regulatory compliance.
Payment infrastructure has evolved over many decades. The original systems were built before public/private key cryptography existed and before people carried networked computers in their pockets. It is unsurprising that a system designed from scratch today would differ from what has emerged. Existing systems are so deeply embedded in daily life that people rarely question the need for a middleman in payments or the fact that a 16-digit PAN (password) , is shared with everyone they pay. Yet people remain concerned about fraud; sharing that PAN/password with everyone you pay makes fraud easy. Payment fraud prevention is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but people will seemingly do anything to prevent fraud except switch to public/private key-based encrypted soft wallets on their smartphones. The ~3% charged on every card transaction is accepted as a cost of doing business, although a merchant with a 10% profit margin could increase profits by up to 20% by using Stabledrop instead of card networks to accept payments.
Charlie adds, “Right now payment processors are switching to use stablecoin ‘rails’ (for example Mastercard/BVNK and Stripe/Bridge). If the revolution stops there, the winners will be the incumbent payment processors, as they will continue to reap the profits while paying less to process the transactions. The benefits reach merchants and consumers when they start transacting natively in stablecoins.”
Stabledrop provides the seller assurance and buyer protection missing from direct wallet-to-wallet payments, without introducing a regulated middleman that complicates the process, increases costs, and slows it down.
Insights from Martin Burge, CCO and Co-founder
As Skyscanner’s first employee, Martin experienced its journey through to its $1.75Bn acquisition. He has witnessed every stage of growth firsthand. The central lesson was that category-defining growth comes not simply from improving a product, but from spotting underserved market opportunities, Developing the underlying technology, and delivering a commercial strategy that brings an entire ecosystem together.
It reinforced the need to align product decisions with commercial realities at every stage. At Skyscanner, Martin led product development and commercialization across new verticals, including OTAs, hotels, and car hire. Working at the intersection of technology and strategy showed him that breakthrough technology can stall without a compelling commercial model for every party.
He is applying the same approach at Stabledrop. Creating a new transaction network requires market development as much as software. Smart contracts can replace slow, expensive payment rails with non-custodial conditional payments, but technology alone will not change user behaviour.
Stabledrop’s strategy centers on three priorities:
1. Abstracting the Complexity:
Making complex blockchain rails easy to use through frictionless interfaces, including email, web forms, an MCP plugin enabling any AI assistant to use Stabledrop, and APIs.
2. Aligning Commercial Incentives:
Pre-funding smart contracts removes credit checks and chargeback risks for sellers while ensuring protection for buyers.
3. Targeting High-Friction Markets:
Introducing Stabledrop where trust is limited and traditional payments fall short, including “pay-and-pray,” traditional escrow, and e-commerce, using upfront escrow-style conditional payments to protect both parties in every transaction.
Scaling Skyscanner showed Martin that a network succeeds when it delivers clear value to everyone involved. At Stabledrop, he is building infrastructure that makes protected, conditional payments the standard way businesses trade. Contact: sales@stabledrop.me
Insights from Liza Sutherland, COO and Co-founder
Her experience as a repeat founder, venture-capital professional, and advisor to companies that have collectively raised substantial venture funding has given her a perspective across both sides of the startup ecosystem. These experiences have taught her to distinguish between technology that attracts market attention and infrastructure businesses capable of creating lasting enterprise value, a distinction that continues to shape Stabledrop’s growth strategy.
Liza first learned this in New York’s music business in the late 90s. Her team ran ten record labels and a distribution company. The labels and signed artists attracted attention, while distribution operated behind the scenes, delivering records to shops, managing in-store marketing, and functioning like a machine. She opened the first fifty retail accounts and grew distribution from zero to $2 million in three years. A label depended on its next hit, while distribution provided the underlying infrastructure. It needed no hit, only a steady flow of records and the trust of retailers.
Years later, her work in investment and advisory roles reinforced this lesson. Attention matters: it opens doors, supports hiring, and helps secure funding. However, lasting companies back headlines with less glamorous evidence, including retention, volume, and customers who would struggle without their product. A simple test is to ask who would call if the product or service disappeared tomorrow, and how quickly they would do so.
Stablecoins have attracted attention and investment, but much of the focus remains on the underlying rails rather than the everyday problems they can solve. Durable businesses will be those where customers don’t need to know a stablecoin is involved. Like the retailers stocking her records, they only need confidence that what was promised will arrive. For Stabledrop, it means buyers knowing their payments remain protected until goods arrive, while sellers know the money is available to be earned.
That is why Stabledrop is building distribution with banks, payment providers and platforms first, so protected payments reach businesses through the services they already use.
Banks, platforms and investors who want to be part of that can contact the team enquiries@stabledrop.me or head straight to https://stabledrop.me for more information or to even give it a try.
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