> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.zoth.io/zoth/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.zoth.io/zoth/getting-started/the-core-problem.md).
# The Core Problem
### Fragmented, Inefficient, and Exclusionary Financial Infrastructure
Despite rapidly growing economies across the Global South, the financial system remains structurally broken for the institutions and businesses that need it most.
#### 65M+ Businesses Underserved by Formal Financial Infrastructure
More than 65 million small and medium-sized businesses across the Global South remain unserved or severely underserved by formal financial institutions. They lack access to treasury tools, compliant cross-border settlement, and modern financial infrastructure, not because they are not economically active, but because legacy banking systems were never designed for their scale, speed, or privacy requirements.
#### Legacy Banking Infrastructure and Operating Models
Existing banks, and even most neobanks, continue to operate on outdated financial rails. The result is delayed settlement cycles, high foreign exchange spreads, siloed systems, limited financial privacy, and near-zero yield on operating balances. Modernizing the front-end experience without rebuilding the underlying infrastructure has not materially improved financial outcomes for institutions and businesses operating in high-growth markets.
#### Current Stablecoin Neobanks Ignore the Real Opportunity
Today’s stablecoin neobank category remains largely focused on crypto-native users. There is still no privacy-first, full-stack stablecoin banking platform built for institutional and enterprise operators, one that combines regulated payments, compliant yield, programmable money, and enterprise-grade financial infrastructure into a single system optimized for cross-border treasury and agentic financial workflows.
#### Inefficient Global Settlement and Capital Friction
Global settlements and cross-border flows continue to be constrained by fees of 3–8%, multi-day settlement windows, fragmented intermediaries, and significant counterparty risk. These inefficiencies create major operational overhead for institutions and enterprises, particularly in emerging markets where growth, trade, and treasury management depend heavily on efficient movement of capital.
#### Depreciating Currencies and Eroding Store of Value
For institutions and businesses operating in volatile markets, holding local currency represents a constant risk of capital erosion. Currency depreciation and inflationary pressure weaken treasuries, reduce purchasing power, and trap capital in legacy systems that offer neither financial privacy nor access to stable, yield-bearing, and compliant stores of value.
#### No Access to Global Investing Accounts or Programmable Money
Businesses across emerging markets still have limited access to global yield opportunities, tokenized real-world assets, and programmable financial instruments. Capital remains idle inside closed, low-yield systems, disconnected from the treasury strategies, regulated stablecoin infrastructure, and programmable financial tools increasingly available in more developed markets.
#### Existing Payment Rails Cannot Support the Agentic Economy
The rise of the Agentic Economy introduces an entirely new class of financial participant: autonomous AI agents and automated systems that require instant, programmable, privacy-preserving, and low-friction value transfer to operate at global scale. Existing payment infrastructure was not designed for this. With more than $250 billion in payments expected to be mediated by AI agents, and with 33% of enterprise software projected to be agentic by 2028, the gap between what legacy rails can support and what the next economy requires is widening rapidly.
Together, these failures create a compounding disadvantage across the Global South and the emerging Agentic Economy. Institutions, businesses, and machine-native systems all remain constrained by fragmented infrastructure built for a pre-digital era, one that is too slow, too exposed, and too rigid for the future of global finance.
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