At the intersection of digital assets and traditional finance, too many promises still fall apart on execution. But for Zeeshan Uppal, COO and Compliance Director at XBD Group, the goal isn’t disruption it’s coherence.

Speaking with ClickZ at Money20/20 Europe, Uppal outlined how XBD is quietly building the connective tissue that allows multinationals to move between fiat and crypto rails without triggering compliance gridlock or institutional rejection.

XBD’s origin story reads less like a crypto startup and more like an infrastructure fix born out of necessity. Initially a pure OTC desk, the firm’s core business involved helping institutional clients on- and off-ramp crypto assets. But as major financial institutions began restricting even basic transfers to wallets like Coinbase, the firm recognized a deeper opportunity.

“We realized we could offer both traditional fiat rails and digital asset services under a single banner,” said Uppal.

Today, XBD issues virtual IBANs that allow clients to receive fiat payments, convert to stablecoins, and settle transactions globally all without the friction typically associated with crossing into the digital asset world. The result is an elegant workaround: bank-to-bank trust with crypto speed.

Unlike many fintechs that treat compliance as a cost center, XBD views it as core product architecture. The group holds licenses across Canada, Lithuania, the UAE (pending VARA approval), and is finalizing its acquisition of a UK EMI license.

“We understand what banks want we speak the same language,” Uppal noted.

That philosophy is embedded throughout the client lifecycle: from AML frameworks to KYC/KYB onboarding, the company has engineered a compliance-led architecture that meets both crypto-native and regulated expectations.

While stablecoins are often painted as a recent phenomenon, XBD has been transacting with them for nearly five years. But demand has spiked recently not because the tech changed, but because the market finally understood the pain it solves.

Uppal laid out the advantages with clarity:

In other words, stablecoins are proving useful not speculative.

Asked about the public narrative around stablecoins and retail adoption, Uppal didn’t hedge.

He offered the example of MiCA’s exclusion of USDT in Europe, which removes one of the largest stablecoins from the market entirely. This, he argued, doesn’t encourage safer adoption it undermines it.

Meanwhile, the emergence of CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) raises deeper questions. While ostensibly modernizing monetary policy, they risk introducing surveillance and state-level data monopolies under the guise of innovation.

XBD’s vision isn’t to replace banks or regulators. It’s to provide a model where both can co-exist with digital asset flows without compromise.

That means supporting:

“We’re not chasing retail scale. We’re solving for institutional pain,” Uppal summarized.

At a time when much of the industry is still stuck between pilots and pivots, XBD offers something increasingly rare: clarity of purpose and execution at pace.

Not affiliated with Money20/20

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