How Xelio Uses Para to Power SMS Payments: Disrupting the $700B+ remittance market

This article was originally published on the Xelio blog

“Can you send me some money in crypto?”

That simple question still breaks most onboarding flows.

When Xelio’s founder tried to send stablecoins home from Sweden to India, the process quickly turned into a tangle of apps, seed phrases, and confusion:

“What is a public key? Why do I need to save these words? Which crypto are you sending? My friends say this is a scam. How do I get it to my bank?”

Even motivated, tech-literate users struggle to complete that journey. Some make it through. Others park their assets on centralized exchanges. Most give up before they begin.

Stablecoins have achieved undeniable product-market fit onchain, yet their usability gap has left billions who need them the most unable to participate.

Xelio was founded to close that gap.

The Challenge: Global Money Still Moves Slowly

Sending money to family shouldn’t require a smartphone, a VPN, or a 10% fee. Yet for millions, that remains the norm.

The internet has unified global communication, but cross-border payments lag behind. Traditional remittance systems remain expensive, fragmented, and extractive. Crypto should solve this (instant, low-cost, borderless transfers), but onboarding friction keeps it out of reach for most everyday users, especially in regions where:

• Internet access is unreliable
• Smartphones aren’t universal
• Financial infrastructure is limited

Nigeria illustrates the paradox:

• 87% of the population owns a mobile phone
• 40% remain unbanked
• Nigeria ranks #2 globally in crypto adoption, with $20B+ in annual remittance volume and $3B in stablecoin transactions in Q1 2024 alone. 

The global remittance market exceeds $700B. Crypto can compete, but only if it’s accessible to everyone.

Xelio’s Approach: Stablecoins Over SMS

Xelio set out with a simple question:
What if stablecoins could power payments even without the internet?

Their answer is a global money-movement and payment platform that runs entirely over SMS. With just a phone number and a text message, users can send or receive USDC and other stablecoins instantly, no need for apps, passwords, or data connections.

The experience feels like sending airtime credit, not crypto.

• Works on any phone
• No downloads or setup
• Real-time, stable transfers over SMS

Underneath, however, sits a modern crypto infrastructure stack built with Para and Solana.

Under the Hood: Para + Solana

To make stablecoin transfers feel as easy as airtime, Xelio needed infrastructure that disappears into the background: fast, secure, and built for scale. That’s why they use Para for embedded wallets and Solana for settlement.

Embedded Wallets by Para

Using Para’s pregenerated wallets and Server SDK , Xelio can create self-custodial wallets programmatically. When someone sends their first SMS, a Para wallet is automatically generated and linked to their SIM identity: no extensions, no browsers, no setup required.

Para enables:

• Instant onboarding via automatic wallet creation 
• Secure signing using Distributed MPC behind the scenes 
• Zero setup for users, everything just works via SMS 

This architecture lets Xelio abstract away every technical layer and deliver a product that feels native to the simplest devices.

Para already powers more than 15 million wallets across production environments, providing the reliability and throughput required for global money movement at scale.

Solana for Speed and Scale

For settlement, Xelio chose Solana: a network designed for low-latency, high-throughput transactions that make cross-border payments viable.

• Sub-second finality ensures near-instant transfers
• Low fees keep costs negligible
• Scalability supports millions of concurrent users

Solana provides the efficiency of traditional fintech rails while preserving the openness and composability of stablecoin infrastructure.

What’s Next

Xelio is piloting across Nigeria, with plans to expand globally and to bring accessible, stablecoin-based payments to the regions that need them most.

The team recently launched support for WhatsApp transfers, extending their SMS banking protocol to where users already spend their time.

Why It Matters

Stablecoins have proven that open financial infrastructure can work, but to make it universal, it needs to reach beyond apps and internet connections.

Xelio shows what that future can look like: Para-powered wallets on Solana rails, delivered over the simplest possible interface — a text message.

Crypto that works anywhere, for anyone, on any phone.

Learn more about Xelio and integrating Para into your application