In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray sits down with Marwan Forzley, founder of Veem (formerly Align Commerce), to trace the evolution of global money movement. Forzley, a computer scientist by training, previously founded eBillMe and sold it to Western Union, giving him a rare view inside a legacy financial incumbent. He explains why cross border payment friction often comes less from the payment rail itself and more from KYC, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring layered around it. Forzley details how Veem began experimenting in 2015 with settling payments by converting into Bitcoin, an early bet that traditional and blockchain based rails could coexist rather than compete. The conversation covers the practical differences between Bitcoin and stablecoins for business payments, how Veem scaled to nearly two million businesses across 110 countries, and the company's 2026 launch of stablecoin accounts and USD virtual cards. The episode closes on Forzley's vision for the next frontier: autonomous AI agents and robots transacting directly with each other, using stablecoins as the elastic, programmable settlement layer, and the governance challenges that emerge when machines start paying machines.
Veem founder Marwan Forzley on building Bitcoin payment rails since 2015, why stablecoins beat wires, and payments in a world of AI agents.
What is Veem, aside from what it stands for, and what problem are you solving?
We started Veem, very easy exchange of money, to make it simple for businesses to move money globally. We help them pay suppliers, pay labor, and collect payments and invoices, domestically and cross border, in 110 countries and over 80 currencies. We combine traditional rails like wires and cards with newer ones like stablecoins, solving the friction, cost, and slow integration that comes with traditional wire transfers.
You founded eBillMe and sold it to Western Union. What did working inside the incumbent show you that you couldn't see from the outside?
Incumbents have massive assets: reach, distribution, scale, things you don't have running solo. The complexity is transitioning what you built into a system with that scale so it can actually reach the distribution. Incumbents move slower and need far more coordination and navigation to get things done. That's just part of the nature of being that size.
How much of the friction in cross border payments is technical, and how much is just accumulated history?
If you put the friction in a pie chart, some comes from the rail itself, whether it's SWIFT, ACH, or stablecoins. But a lot comes from layers around payments: KYC, regulatory checks, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and fraud prevention. Those compliance layers, not the payment layer itself, usually produce the significant delays and headaches customers experience.
What was the specific moment you decided the correspondent banking chain was worth attacking directly?
Any system with multiple intermediaries built on single function technology, like batching wire payments bank to bank, loses efficiency. That creates an opportunity for a different set of intermediaries using different technology and economics to make the transaction simpler. Stablecoin rails still have intermediaries, they just operate with a very different structure, cost, and operating rhythm than a wire.
In 2015 you settled payments by converting into Bitcoin and out the other side. What made you willing to build on that rail?
It was a vision that you could construct payments on completely different infrastructure than what existed. We were early, experimenting in 2015 with moving payments onto the blockchain. The question was what if instead of sending fiat on traditional rails, I move it onto a different rail entirely. What would the benefits be, speed, cost, simplicity. Over time we learned you need to combine the new with the existing, not replace it.
What's the honest difference between what a stablecoin solves and what Bitcoin solves for a business moving money?
They have similar constructs, but Bitcoin has a much more variable price while a stablecoin stays pegged to the US dollar. Bitcoin is its own asset class, not backed by the dollar. Technologically you can move money on either, but Bitcoin's volatility makes organizing money movement harder. Stablecoins are simpler because the price barely moves, and the liquidity and environment around them are far more mature now.
What happens to payments when the counterparty is a machine rather than a person, agents and robots transacting directly?
Payments were built for humans, a card, a bank account, cash, sent between people or businesses. With robotics, agents, and AI, the future flips to agents paying agents and robots paying robots. Stablecoins shine here because they're simple, elastic, and digital by default, letting my agent pay yours two cents for checking the weather, or half a million dollars for moving warehouse inventory. The real challenge becomes governance, verifying the agent is actually authorized and not hallucinating or acting to cause harm.
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