Retail to credit: The trillion-dollar market separated by boundaries.
In the real world, retail, e-commerce, payments, logistics, and consumer credit are often described as five parallel highways. Although they occasionally intersect, they more often run at high speeds on their respective tracks. We see Walmart and Amazon competing for user entry points at the front end, Visa and Mastercard controlling global settlement, and UPS, SF Express, and FedEx competing on efficiency and cost in the fulfillment segment, while credit services like Klarna and Affirm only take over billing after purchases are completed.
This fragmented pattern, we believe, is the result of long-term effects of technological conditions and institutional frameworks.
In fact, different commercial ecosystems have clear boundaries and benefit distribution mechanisms, and the cost of cross-border collaboration is extremely high, making it difficult to achieve true data and rights integration.
From the perspective of market size, these tracks are colossal.
Global e-commerce sales reached $5.8 trillion in 2023 and are expected to exceed $7.9 trillion by 2027.
The annual transaction total of the global payments industry has long surpassed $150 trillion.
The scale of the logistics industry is approaching $10 trillion, and supply chain finance is expected to reach $13 trillion by 2030.
The total amount of global consumer credit exceeds $30 trillion, with BNPL maintaining an annual growth rate of over 20% in emerging markets.
If these tracks achieve unified accounting for data, funds, and rights on-chain, they will no longer just grow parallelly but will amplify their value multiplicatively through synergy.
In the Web3 era, the on-chainization of asset chains and open collaborative networks based on blockchain technology are providing new breakthrough ideas for this pattern.
It not only changes the way value is recorded and circulated, but also allows originally independent tracks to have the possibility of integration at the technical and incentive levels; on-chain transactions can carry product prices, logistics status, delivery proofs, and credit records simultaneously; consumption points are no longer limited to a single platform but possess the ability to circulate, pledge, and even lend across scenarios; credit limits can dynamically adjust with real-time changes in on-chain transactions, eliminating the need for bank statements or manual approvals, providing new possibilities.
However, in reality, looking back at the Web3 hotspots of recent years, GameFi, DeFi, NFT, and RWA have each ignited market sentiment but lack a main channel that can settle real transactions, accumulate credit, feedback asset value, and deeply interconnect.
GameFi attracted tens of millions of players in 2021 but struggled to convert virtual assets into sustainable real-world value.
DeFi's locked value nearly approached $180 billion in 2022, but funds mostly circulated within the chain, lacking external economic input.
The NFT market generated an annual transaction volume of $25 billion at its peak but has stagnated in integrating physical goods with the supply chain.
RWA is expected to become a trillion-dollar market, but it currently focuses more on low-frequency assets like government bonds, securities, and real estate, failing to reach daily consumption scenarios.
In this context, PSP begins to attempt to break through from consumption, the most universal economic behavior, and transform it into an on-chain credit, asset, and collaboration network, hoping to ultimately find a new balance amid institutional, technical, and user migration challenges, and release a new round of Web3 market dividends.
PSP is reshaping the industrial landscape based on Web3.
Focusing on PSP (Payment Service Provider), its positioning is at the core hub connecting merchants and payment networks, providing merchants with a full set of transaction infrastructure, including acquiring, clearing, and risk control.
As mentioned above, in the traditional consumer system, the upstream commodity circulation and supply chain links are often disconnected from downstream user operations and financial services. This not only prevents data value from being accumulated but also results in high collaboration costs across scenarios and low efficiency in cross-border transactions and consumer finance.
PSP's solution is based on blockchain technology and oriented towards Web3, hoping to upgrade payments from a single funding channel to an on-chain programmable value network.
Through the on-chain PSP architecture, payment and supply chain finance, loyalty points, BNPL, and other consumer finance modules can operate on the same credit and settlement layer, forming real-time mapping and automatic settlement of capital flows, information flows, and credit flows. Smart contracts ensure that rules are transparent and executable, while cross-border settlements can leverage stablecoins and decentralized clearing networks to reduce costs and shorten cycles. NFTs and on-chain identity systems can also provide cross-platform liquidity for loyalty and membership programs.
In the new model, payments will become the economic hub that spans the entire production, circulation, and consumption chain. In this system, merchants can reduce operational and compliance costs, consumers can obtain seamless experiences across platforms and borders, and the entire network will accumulate real on-chain credit and assets, providing sustainable infrastructure for the traditional world through DeFi, RWA, and more Web3 scenarios.
In the PSP system, the upstream includes merchants and brands directly facing transactions, extending deeper into the supply chain to cover fulfillment aspects such as warehousing, logistics, and distribution, as well as various SaaS tools and data service providers like ERP, CRM, and marketing automation.
Their core value lies not only in promoting the circulation of physical goods but also in accumulating and trading strongly correlated structured data (such as SKU codes, inventory turnover rates, fulfillment cycles) and unstructured data (such as reasons for logistics anomalies, conversion records of marketing activities, customer profile tags). These data are often scattered and difficult to efficiently retrieve under traditional payment models, whereas in the on-chain PSP architecture, all data can be written to the blockchain through encryption, forming verifiable and traceable credit certificates.
Taking cross-border fulfillment as an example, the timestamp of inventory entry at the warehousing end, the node scanning records at the logistics end, and the confirmation of receipt at the delivery end can all be put on-chain, generating a complete data chain spanning production, circulation, and delivery. This not only enables PSP to have stronger real-time capabilities and reliability in risk control, settlement, and dispute handling but also provides high-quality raw materials for the on-chain credit profile under Web3 scenarios. With the help of smart contracts, this credit data can also be automatically called into scenarios such as supply chain finance, decentralized trade financing, and RWA asset pledging, achieving seamless integration from transaction to financing.
In this model, PSP can become a value hub deeply embedded in the upstream of the industrial chain, linking the off-chain and on-chain economies while expanding the boundaries of ecological business, introducing real and verifiable industrial data flows into the entire Web3 financial infrastructure.
In the midstream segment of the industrial system, PSP can achieve automation in settlement without relying on manual reconciliation and centralized clearing institutions; it can execute atomic operations on-chain to ensure the flow of funds. The transaction certificates and ledger updates remain synchronized, ensuring that every payment confirmation and asset transfer can be completed in real-time, fundamentally eliminating the T+1 or longer settlement delays typical in traditional systems.
At the same time, PSP, leveraging cross-chain bridges, Layer2 Rollups, and modular settlement layers, can circulate and match in a multi-chain environment. This means that whether it is cross-regional payments, cross-asset settlements, or exchanges between stablecoins and fiat currencies, it can be completed within a broader and more efficient network, truly achieving global unified settlement.
More importantly, the core value of the on-chain midstream lies in its programmability.
In traditional clearing systems, fund transfers are often rigid 'single-line operations,' making it difficult to accommodate complex business logic.
In the on-chain architecture, PSP can overlay conditional rules through smart contracts.
For instance, in cross-border payments, RWA (such as accounts receivable, warehouse receipts, property rights) can be used as collateral to trigger instant financing; in B2B payments, limits and credit amounts can be automatically adjusted based on on-chain identity credentials; in C-end consumption, combined with on-chain credit scores, BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) or installment payments can be dynamically triggered, becoming an open financial interface between DeFi protocols, stablecoin ecosystems, and institutional payment networks.
Thus, the midstream segment of PSP is gradually completing its role transformation: evolving from a 'cost center' to a new 'value center.' As a value network carrying value-added business, PSP's positioning has already transcended that of a mere payment service provider; it is also a natural liquidity bridge connecting digital assets and traditional finance.
This bridging effect is expected to enhance the flexibility and scalability of the payment network, also opening up new growth curves for PSP, allowing payments themselves to become an important entry point for the emergence of new financial services and asset circulation under the premise of compliance and transparency.
Based on this, PSP is building a comprehensive network that can serve multiple roles, including B-end merchants, cross-border logistics and service nodes, institutional investors participating in consumer finance, and financial institutions providing settlement and clearing for on-chain assets. Each link is consuming, producing, or transforming value and flowing it back to PSP's core network.
Overall, PSP can serve as both a liquidity layer for funds and a ledger for data and rights, and under the trend of on-chainization, this 'dual bus' model is expected to become the central nervous system of future consumption networks.
PSP's scarce ecological niche in the Web3 world.
From the current Web3 ecosystem, the mainstream entry point for users still remains at two dimensions.
Firstly, exchanges, including platforms like Binance, Coinbase, and OKX, remain the first stop for most people to access digital assets, fulfilling core functions such as fund deposit and withdrawal, liquidity aggregation, and asset pricing.
Secondly, public chains: Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain represent the infrastructure for development and application. They rely on ecosystem effects, compatibility, and tool chains to gather the largest developer communities.
However, the true high-frequency entry point that closely resembles daily consumption behavior remains an untouched blank.
We see that neither the attempts at payment wallets nor the expansion of NFT e-commerce and chain games have broken through the 'low-frequency use' ceiling.
In comparison, the number of transactions in global retail payments has already exceeded that of financial asset transactions by dozens of times.
According to statistics from the World Bank, the transaction volume of retail payments alone reaches hundreds of billions of transactions annually, while the stablecoin transfers for the entire year of 2024, even at peak periods, will only amount to tens of millions of transactions per day. In other words, Web3 still lacks a true entry point in the scenario that best reflects 'migration of living habits.'
As Clayton Christensen emphasized: 'The key to competition is not in the product, but in whether it can be embedded in users' daily behavior.' Therefore, whoever occupies the high-frequency consumption entry point holds the initiative in user migration.
The scarcity within the PSP ecosystem lies in its inherent ability not to be limited to a specific type of scenario; it continuously settles on-chain liquidity and verifiable credit through real high-frequency consumption transactions. For example, micropayments in cross-border e-commerce, periodic deductions for online subscriptions, or daily settlements for retail merchants—these seemingly trivial transactions, once migrated on-chain, will form continuous, credible cash flows and credit certificates. This user structure is actually difficult to reach for crypto-native DeFi/DEX, as the latter primarily attracts asset-driven speculative groups rather than 'consumption-driven' real users.
PSP is also on its way to on-chain consumption entry, naturally possessing cross-track spillover effects.
In the PSP system, the credit data accumulated from payment behaviors can directly extend to the BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) model, user points can be assets that circulate freely across platforms, and behavioral data like consumption frequency and transaction habits can empower insurance modeling and investment decisions.
Keynes pointed out: 'Credit does not grow out of banks; it grows out of transaction behavior.'
In the on-chain environment, PSP is precisely fulfilling this role, creating collaborative pathways among the five traditional financial sectors of payments, credit, points, insurance, and investment, establishing an unprecedented channel for user migration and value accumulation.
The multidimensional growth engine of PSP.
In fact, PSP is attempting to build a composite growth engine through multilayered accumulation.
It extends the verification and yield mapping of RWA to consumption scenarios, integrates DePIN physical nodes into payment links, embeds AI intelligent modeling into risk control and credit assessment systems, and is supported by the bidirectional connection of payments and wallets, along with the retention cycle of the loyalty credit system.
This design enables PSP to create a self-growing system that not only captures the liquidity of on-chain assets but also truly places assets into the most active new consumption paths. Moreover, this multidimensional architecture possesses anti-cyclical properties; even if a single track falls into a trough, other modules can still support the overall growth of the system. This 'composite narrative' confirms Albert Hirschman's viewpoint in (The Strategy of Economic Development): 'Diversified growth paths can weaken risks and create robust systemic returns.'
On this basis, PSP is becoming a cross-industry system connector.
It uses payments as an entry point, weaving together five major digital economy backbone tracks: e-commerce/consumption, logistics/supply chain, finance, and content/entertainment into a complementary and symbiotic network, achieving a unified closed loop of capital flows, commodity flows, asset flows, and information flows on-chain for the first time. Thus, the payment narrative has the potential to compete equally with the traditional system.
From the macro market perspective, this cross-track connection is the entire blue ocean market of the digital economy.
The scale of global consumer payments exceeds several tens of trillions of dollars, the annual demand for supply chain finance has already crossed the trillion-dollar level, and the growth of e-commerce and content entertainment continues to release the dividends of population and consumption upgrading.
Therefore, for PSP, not only does it rely on a trillion-dollar blue ocean market, but it is also positioned in a rapidly growing new track, supported by the market size and blue ocean dividends of the global digital economy; PSP's positioning suggests that it is likely to become a key link connecting five major tracks in the future.
$PSP is why it is a long-term asset.
Focusing on the core asset of the PSP ecosystem, $PSP, it possesses the typical attributes of a 'long-term asset.'
However, scalability is a natural advantage of the PSP system. Starting from payments, as a high-frequency, essential application, the usage frequency and accumulated scale of the $PSP token grow in proportion to the expansion of consumption scenarios and user numbers. Every new merchant connection and every cross-border transaction will continuously strengthen the value capture path of $PSP, amplifying it naturally with user network effects.
Similarly, the replicable attribute of the PSP ecosystem determines that its growth model has a high leverage effect. We see that merchant systems in different regions, cross-border e-commerce networks, and supply chain finance scenarios in vertical industries can quickly reuse PSP's infrastructure. Whether it is small payments from local merchants or large settlements in cross-border e-commerce, $PSP can become a unified value intermediary with unlimited market expansion capability.
The PSP ecosystem's credit system, risk control capabilities, and user retention together build a network moat. This means that $PSP token holders are also co-builders of network credit. When a credit accumulation and consumption stickiness based on $PSP forms within the ecosystem, the cost of user migration will significantly increase, naturally enhancing the platform's defensive power, making it difficult to be easily replaced.
Therefore, we have reason to believe that $PSP can benchmark against financial track players like Affirm and Klarna, capturing value in consumer credit, settlement, and installment payments; it can also benchmark against infrastructure-type projects like Helium and IoTeX, accumulating long-term assets through lower-level connections across multiple scenarios and chains. For investors, this means that $PSP has not only the cash flow valuation logic of financial technology but also the scale premium of infrastructure-type networks, presenting a unique valuation space that shows 'multi-industry model overlay.'
Further extending the view, $PSP also possesses other long-term asset characteristics, including:
Policy dividends and compliance pathways: With the improvement of stablecoin legislation and payment compliance frameworks, PSP-type tokens will be further legalized under policy promotion, providing certainty for large-scale institutional capital entry.
Asset accumulation and liquidity value: $PSP can serve as collateral, credit certificates, and anchors of network liquidity, continuously being locked and used in financial derivative services, forming a stable 'on-chain treasury.'
Network spillover effects: As a payment token, $PSP will naturally extend to e-commerce, supply chains, content entertainment, and other sectors, gradually building a pattern of 'cross-industry value capture' to avoid dependence on a single application.
In summary, the value logic of $PSP is continuously reinforced by network effects, consumption scenarios, and credit accumulation, establishing it as a long-term asset. In the future market space, it relies on the vast blue ocean of the global payment and consumption market while occupying the scarce dividends of Web3 infrastructure, with the potential to grow into a 'connector of five major tracks,' becoming a rare long-term scarce asset in the eyes of investors.
Summary
Overall, PSP is reconstructing the infrastructure for Web3 consumption, spanning payments, consumption, e-commerce, logistics, finance, and content entertainment, becoming the 'traffic and credit hub' in the entire digital consumption economy. As the ecological network continues to expand, PSP will gradually evolve into a cross-industry connector, bringing users, merchants, and capital together on the same value chain. This will be an untapped trillion-dollar blue ocean market with limitless potential.