In the summer of 2020, as pandemic-driven volatility gripped markets, SoftBank Group shocked Wall Street with a series of massive options bets on U.S. technology stocks. Behind those trades — which earned SoftBank the “Nasdaq whale” moniker — was Akshay Naheta, an executive whose career has been marked by bold wagers on disruption.

Now, after orchestrating multi-billion-dollar deals, including an attempt to merge Nvidia and ARM, Naheta is making perhaps his most ambitious bet yet: That the world’s payment infrastructure is ripe for reinvention.

His Zug, Switzerland-based startup, Distributed Technologies Research (DTR), is attempting to bridge the gap between traditional banking and blockchain technology, joining an army of companies trying to modernize the global payments infrastructure.

The startup claims its technology can eliminate various payment inefficiencies, from transfer costs and interchange fees to foreign exchange conversion charges and settlement delays. “Current payment networks suffer from inefficiencies – transfer costs, interchange fees, FX conversion charges, settlement delays and other opaque fees,” Naheta told TechCrunch in an interview.

DTR’s core technology, AmalgamOS, essentially connects banks with blockchain networks. Through APIs, it allows businesses to integrate payment capabilities while maintaining compliance with local regulations. The system can handle everything from merchant payments to treasury management, supporting both traditional currencies and major stablecoins across 48 countries.

The startup has built what Naheta describes as an “international orchestration network” that automatically routes transactions through either traditional banking or blockchain rails, depending on which path offers the optimal combination of speed and cost. “We’re connected to 12,000 banks in Europe,” he said in an interview. A business integrating DTR’s APIs can let its customers initiate transfers directly through banking apps.

DTR’s push into payments infrastructure comes at a seemingly opportune time. Visa and Mastercard — both of which charge 2-3% swipe fees, typically the second highest cost for merchants after payroll — are facing mounting scrutiny over their duopoly, and the U.S.’ proposed Credit Card Competition Act could require banks to offer merchants alternatives to the dominant networks.

DTR’s early customers say its infrastructure fills a significant gap. Philip Lord of Oobit, a crypto wallet startup, said the system allowed his company to move money from his crypto wallet to a U.K. bank account on Christmas Day in under 30 seconds — a transfer that would have taken days through traditional channels.

Naheta’s interest in payment infrastructure stems from an unlikely source: SoftBank’s acquisition of Fortress Investment Group in 2017. The deal put about $20 million worth of Bitcoin on SoftBank’s balance sheet.

As he studied the underlying blockchain technology, Naheta says he saw an opportunity to apply his background in wireless communications to payment networks. While still at SoftBank, Naheta had begun assembling what he hoped would be DTR’s founding team. He reached out to his undergraduate thesis advisor, Pramod Viswanath, an expert in wireless communications who now leads Princeton’s blockchain center and Sreeram Kannan, who would later start Eigen Layer.

The team saw blockchain as a peer-to-peer communications network at heart, one that could apply decades of research in wireless systems to revolutionize payments. Naheta said he nearly resigned from SoftBank in summer 2018 to focus on DTR and crypto venture Bakkt, but was persuaded to stay by senior executives, including Rajeev Misra and Masayoshi Son.

Naheta’s previous forays into the payments sector also included SoftBank’s investment in Wirecard, which later collapsed. SoftBank still made profits on its investment in Wirecard. “I’ve had lots of missteps,” he acknowledged. “I looked at it from a perspective of, here’s a company that has all of these regulated licenses around the world, clearly has the payments technology.”

Those experiences appear to have influenced DTR’s emphasis on compliance and institutional credibility. This measured approach extends to the company’s growth strategy. “Even if I increase my headcount to 60 people by the second quarter, we’ll be free-cash-flow positive,” he said.

The startup faces competition on multiple fronts. Wise has built a successful business matching currency flows between countries, Ripple offers blockchain-based settlement despite its legal troubles, while traditional banks also say they are upgrading their systems through initiatives like SWIFT. Last, but not least, Stripe’s recent $1 billion acquisition of Bridge stands to help the world’s most valuable fintech startup make deeper inroads into payments.

Yet Naheta sees an opening in serving businesses caught between these worlds — particularly digital nomads, creator economy platforms, and companies operating across emerging markets.

“Banks are not equipped to run KYC/AML at that small level, where you’re paying out $200 to 10,000 people per month,” he argued. The fragmented nature of national payment systems creates particular challenges for businesses operating globally, as each jurisdiction maintains its own rails and regulations.

The payments industry’s high margins and network effects make it notoriously difficult to disrupt. PayPal commands a $70 billion market cap even after recent declines, while Visa and Mastercard together are worth over $1 tillion. 

“I really think that the retail customer is getting screwed on payments,” he says. “And it’s not the fault of the banks. They are plugged into legacy systems and it’s very hard to turn a Titanic.”

Lord of Oobit said in an interview that the space remains wide open. He pointed out that until just a year ago, the only option for businesses needing to move between crypto and traditional banking systems was to “go to like an OTC shop and pay probably like 1 to 3% to get it transferred.”

“It’s crazy that for so many years, we have had so many startups come up, we have had so many coins show up, and whenever I wanted to do an on-ramp or off-ramp, there was no other formalized legal idea system around,” he said. DTR’s solution is “a block faster” than alternatives.