Clear Junction is a London-based payments company specialising in correspondent accounts for regulated financial institutions. Since its launch in 2016, it has focused on one thing: helping financial service providers move money quickly and compliantly across borders.
It now operates in over 100 countries, processes €50billion annually and was recently recognised in the Financial Times’ FT 1000 ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, for the second year running.
In a conversation with The Fintech Times, CEO Dima Kats explains why Clear Junction has kept its focus narrow, how crypto is starting to be used for real payments and why regulatory differences between markets are becoming a growing problem for the industry.
“We are the essence of this industry”
Clear Junction doesn’t serve consumers or corporates directly. Instead, it provides infrastructure to other regulated financial institutions. Kats describes this positioning as fundamental to the company’s identity.
“We’re a payment service provider who serves other payment service providers. We act as a wholesaler. We serve banks, payment companies, remittance companies, electronic money institutions and also crypto businesses,” he says. “We provide services to the service providers. In my view, we are sort of the essence of this industry.”
It’s a business model that is not only focused, but also deeply specialised, and that strategy has shaped every part of the business.
“We decided that we didn’t do anything else besides just that,” Kats explains. “We spent all our energy, all our resources, all the wisdom of some very smart people that we have in the company only on improving that methodology for risk management. We don’t do mortgages. We don’t touch end users. Everything we do is designed for regulated institutions.”
He believes this focus has allowed Clear Junction to build a product that clients actively want. “We built the methodology, the technology, the expertise, with lots of attention to tiny details. And all of a sudden, we had a product that sells itself.”
Risk, he adds, is central to everything. “This business is all about managing risk: regulatory, reputational, cyber. And when there’s a risk we can’t manage, we simply walk away.”
A world of entropy
This need to manage risk sits within a broader backdrop of instability. Kats describes a rising level of uncertainty across markets and jurisdictions, with unpredictable changes affecting everything from client behaviour to regulatory frameworks.
“It’s always hectic in this industry,” he says. “But the amount of entropy has increased dramatically, not just in the industry, also in the world.”
This is especially evident in sanctions policy. He points to the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, on 24 February, when the EU launched its 16th round of sanctions. At the same time, signals from the US suggested a softening stance.
“We now have to comply with both trends,” he says. “And we know we can’t rely on our American providers or clients, because they’re complying with a different regime now. Up until recently, those regimes were aligned. They’re not anymore.”
Kats believes this divergence is set to grow. “Political instability leads to further fragmentation of regulatory regimes, even within geographies that used to be aligned.”
This affects not just compliance, but competition. “Some organisations in the US now operate within a regulatory regime that is much more relaxed. How can we compete with that?”
Initially, he says, the rapid easing of crypto regulation in the US looked appealing. “In the beginning, we were jealous. But they kept going with the easing, and I’m not sure if I’m jealous anymore. I wouldn’t vote for a world with no regulation. We all need some rules.”
Kats is sceptical about whether deregulation will deliver long-term benefits. “In the midterm perspective, I don’t think it will be such a great thing for the American market. Here, we have a stronger and more thought-through regulatory framework. It will help things work better and be more predictable.”
Stablecoins where SWIFT used to be
That unpredictability is also changing how financial institutions move money. In the face of regulatory divergence and outdated infrastructure, more firms are turning to stablecoins for practical use cases like cross-border liquidity and treasury management.
“Up until recently, cryptocurrencies were good only for investment. Not anymore. We see more and more real use by our clients for moving their own liquidity,” Kats explains.
He gives the example of a remittance company that collects payments in the UK and sends money to families in Africa. “They’re not using SWIFT anymore. They’re using stablecoins. That’s a tectonic change.”
For Kats, the reason is clear. “The correspondent banking model together with SWIFT was built 50 or 60 years ago to facilitate a small number of large payments. Globalisation has created millions of small transactions. The system doesn’t fit the purpose anymore.”
He sees the use of stablecoins as a natural next step in the evolution that began with services like PayPal and Wise. “Crypto is the next stage in that development,” he says. “I’m not a crypto geek, but we’re seeing more and more demand. It’s really happening.”
Crypto without crypto
Even as crypto becomes more useful, most clients remain cautious. Kats suggests the solution is to let them access crypto rails without taking crypto onto their books.
“What we’ve done is let them do crypto without having crypto,” he says.
Clear Junction’s clients can now use fiat balances to make outbound transfers in stablecoins. “They don’t have to hold any crypto. But they can still send payments over USDC or USDT. It gives them access to the rails without the exposure.”
He believes this kind of hybrid model is essential to meet institutional needs, particularly as blockchain-based infrastructure becomes more viable for regulated financial services. On-chain transfers are increasingly being seen not as speculative experiments, but as scalable tools that offer faster settlement, lower costs and improved transparency, especially for cross-border liquidity.
It’s also part of a broader mindset, one shaped by uncertainty.
“Probably the only thing that is going to be constant is the change,” Kats said. “You just need to accept that and build accordingly.”
