SEA Weekly #08: When Energy Gets Expensive, Payment Friction Gets Political

Crude oil crossed a hundred dollars a barrel, the IMF cut growth forecasts for Asia's emerging economies, and Southeast Asia's governments reached for subsidy levers. The real story wasn't in the macro headlines — it was in the payment infrastructure layer quietly assembling beneath them. AMRO made the case for local-currency settlement connectivity, Thunes and Circle extended stablecoin settlement to 140 countries, and Ebanx expanded corridor by corridor on its own balance sheet. The energy shock isn't delaying payments modernization. It's selecting for the versions that reduce economic drag fastest — and turning payment friction from a product metric into a policy problem.Read the article at https://expertlinked.in/posts/2026-04-19-sea-weekly-when-energy-gets-expensive-payment-friction-gets-political/