How WeWire Cut Stablecoin Settlement Time by 90% and Elevated Compliance with Freemarket’s LIQUI-DT™

Speed and compliance are the hallmarks of any payment system that wants to be effective and scale.

At WeWire, we understand this. As we continue building infrastructure that helps businesses and financial institutions move money across borders, we are constantly looking for improvements, technologies and partnerships that allow us to deliver faster transactions without compromising on the regulatory integrity of the financial system.

That is why our long-standing partnership with Freemarket has been particularly valuable.

Through our long-standing partnership with Freemarket, we were given early access to LIQUI-DT™, a service that gives businesses real-time access to freshly minted, primary-market USD₮ issued by Tether. LIQUI-DT™ is built on Freemarket’s compliant fiat rails and global payment network, with Axiym’s liquidity engine and on-chain settlement layer and Tether’s primary-market issuance. Together they give WeWire compliant access to freshly minted stablecoins inside a fully regulated payment ecosystem.

Freemarket officially launched LIQUI-DT™ today. As one of its early users, we want to share what it has changed for us and for the businesses that move money through WeWire.

The problem: speed without compromising compliance

WeWire powers cross-border payments for businesses operating in and across emerging markets. A large share of those flows involves converting USD into stablecoins so that value can move across borders quickly and settle around the clock.

Before LIQUI-DT™, we off-ramped USD payments into stablecoins through partners that sourced liquidity on the secondary market. The process worked, but it had friction built in. Each conversion passed through several counterparties, each with its own confirmation and checks. Liquidity sometimes had to be located before a trade could complete. Before settlement, our team also had to do extra diligence on where the tokens had come from.

The result was a settlement window of 45 minutes to one hour per transaction. For a business paying a supplier, meeting payroll or closing a trade, an hour is a long time. Currencies move and cut-offs pass during that wait, and customers are left asking where their money is.

The shift: direct access to the primary market

Through our partnership with Freemarket, WeWire gained early access to LIQUI-DT™, enabling our treasury team to access freshly minted, primary-market USD₮.

The distinction is important.

Rather than acquiring stablecoins that have already circulated in the secondary market, LIQUI-DT™ provides access to USD₮ minted directly in the primary market.

According to Freemarket, the service combines its regulated fiat payment network with Axiym’s liquidity and settlement infrastructure and Tether’s primary-market issuance. The result is an integrated route for accessing freshly minted USD₮, with clear provenance for treasury and compliance teams.

For WeWire, this created two immediate advantages:

1. Settlement became significantly faster.
2. Our treasury team gained greater visibility into the provenance of the stablecoins being used for settlement.

And the difference was measurable.

The results: 90% reduction in settlement time 

Since integrating LIQUI-DT™ into our treasury operations, WeWire has settled transactions that would typically take 45 minutes to an hour in four minutes or less. That is a reduction of more than 90% in settlement time.

For our customers, this means:

• Near-instant settlement, so funds reach beneficiaries in minutes rather than sitting in transit for most of an hour.
• Greater price certainty, because direct liquidity reduces exposure to rate movements during settlement.
• 24/7 availability, so businesses are not limited by banking hours in any single market.
• Better cash-flow planning, because treasury teams can rely on predictable settlement times.

“Our customers are building businesses across some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and they shouldn’t have to wait hours for their money to move. Over the past six months, using LIQUI-DT™ through our partnership with Freemarket has helped us reduce that wait to minutes without compromising on compliance. For us, speed and regulatory integrity have always had to go together, and LIQUI-DT™ has proven to be the kind of infrastructure that makes that possible at scale.”

— Eben Ghanney, CEO, WeWire

The compliance advantage: why “freshly minted” matters

Speed gets the headlines, but for a regulated payments business the compliance story matters just as much.

Stablecoins sourced from the secondary market can carry a history. Before reaching a new holder, a token may have passed through many wallets, exchanges and counterparties. Some of that history may be clean. Some may involve exposure that compliance teams have to investigate, document and sometimes reject. That diligence takes time, and it is one reason conversions used to take so long.

Freshly minted USD₮ removes that uncertainty. Because the tokens are issued directly in the primary market, they have no prior on-chain transaction history and no previous holders. Their provenance is clear from the moment of creation. For WeWire, this means:

• Clear provenance: every token can be traced directly to issuance, with no inherited exposure from unknown counterparties.
• Gated, verified access: LIQUI-DT™ is available only to verified businesses and is subject to KYC/AML and other eligibility requirements, so every party in the flow has been vetted.
• A documented audit trail: access is gated and documented, which makes it easier to evidence controls for internal reporting and for our regulators.
• Regulated end to end: the entire flow runs inside a regulated payment ecosystem, from fiat entry through Freemarket’s FCA-authorised network to on-chain settlement.

This matters because WeWire operates under licences from FINTRAC in Canada and the Financial Services Commission in Mauritius. We hold ourselves to the standard those regulators expect. LIQUI-DT™ helps us meet that standard with less manual work and more confidence.

“Before, a large part of our settlement time went into sourcing liquidity and checking where the stablecoins had come from,” said Andy Yaddah, Payment Operations Associate on the Treasury team at WeWire. “With LIQUI-DT™, the USD₮ is freshly minted, so the provenance question is answered from the start. We can move from instruction to settlement in under four minutes and still have a clean, documented trail for every transaction. It has changed how our team works day to day.”

Why this matters for WeWire

WeWire’s business has evolved considerably since we first began helping businesses move money across borders.

Today, our infrastructure connects fiat payment rails, stablecoins, virtual accounts, wallets, APIs and treasury capabilities to help businesses and financial institutions operate across markets.

As that infrastructure grows, the expectations around our underlying settlement systems have to grow with it.

• Faster settlement means better liquidity. 
• Clearer provenance means stronger operational confidence.
• Regulated infrastructure means speed does not have to come at the expense of compliance.

This is ultimately what makes partnerships like ours with Freemarket important.

The future of cross-border payments isn’t simply about replacing one payment rail with another. It is about connecting the right rails, liquidity and compliance infrastructure so that money can move faster and responsibly.

What this means for WeWire customers

LIQUI-DT™ strengthens the rails our products already run on, including our USDT, USDC and GHST stablecoin rails, our 24/7 OTC desk and our payment APIs. Businesses using WeWire to pay suppliers, receive funds or manage liquidity across borders now benefit from faster settlement and a cleaner compliance record for every conversion.

Our partnership with Freemarket reflects how we approach infrastructure more broadly. We look for partners that make payments faster without asking our customers to accept more risk. Direct, regulated access to freshly minted stablecoins is a significant step in that direction, and we are proud to have been among the first to use it.