Recently spent a few days in Vietnam and personally felt how real the payment pain points for tourists and foreign workers are: the currency exchange rate at the airport is terrible, small roadside shops basically do not accept card payments, and the remittance fees and delays when sending money home are frustrating. As a result, I came across the collaboration between Basal Pay and Plasma, and I instantly felt that this is the true grassroots application of stablecoins, rather than just shouting slogans on Twitter every day.

Imagine you are a backpacker or a Southeast Asian worker, holding USDT, but you don't have a local bank card. Usually, you either endure high fees to exchange for cash or look for black market ATMs that take advantage of you. Now, Basal Pay has directly integrated with the Plasma underlying layer, making the USDT↔VND conversion smooth: just scan a code like a local using MoMo or ZaloPay, buy a cup of Vietnamese coffee, call a Grab motorcycle, pay rent, all without feeling it. Behind this is the native chain of Plasma's stablecoin running, which is fast, low-cost, and avoids the layers of exploitation from traditional banks.

This collaboration is not just talk—Basal Pay has already served over 12 million tourists and a $14 billion remittance market in Vietnam (especially with the sandbox pilot in Da Nang). Now, with Plasma added, it's friendly for merchants: small shop owners don’t need to understand crypto to accept USDT settled in VND, with instant settlements and no chargeback risk. Tourists can spend easily, and foreign workers can send money home each month, saving a lot on intermediary fees and time.

Why is this move so bold? Because the remittance scale in Vietnam is enormous (hundreds of billions of dollars each year), with traditional channels charging over 6% in fees and taking days to settle. Plasma + BASAL directly brings stablecoins into everyday scenarios: not as speculative tools, but as real 'local payments' with actual value. Merchants are happy (easy payments), users are happy (able to spend without banks), and regulators are reassured (compliance in conversion + AML).

This is the direction for stablecoins to break through: not relying on meme speculation, but solving real pain points. Vietnam is testing the waters first, and other Southeast Asian countries are likely to follow soon. $XPL, as the native token of Plasma, will gradually reflect its value when capturing this real traffic in the future.

For those who have already used it in Vietnam, can you share your experience? For those who haven’t been, imagine this: in the future, just bring USDT when you travel abroad!#Plasma @Plasma $XPL