For years, blockchain has promised to bank the unbanked. It’s a powerful slogan but in reality, the impact in emerging markets has been limited. Not because the need isn’t real, but because most solutions were built without fully understanding how fragile financial infrastructure really is in these regions.

In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, nearly half of the adult population remains unbanked. In some countries, like South Sudan, access to basic banking barely exists. Even for those with bank accounts, the systems they rely on are often unreliable, expensive, and slow. Network outages are normal. Settlements take days. Fees quietly eat into already thin margins. When things break, people fall back to cash—not by choice, but by necessity.

What struck me while reading ADI’s documentation is that they’re not pretending this problem is purely technical. They’re treating payments as national infrastructure—because that’s exactly what they are.

The Real Problem Isn’t Access It’s Reliability

Access to digital payments is growing across emerging markets, but growth doesn’t equal trust. Payment systems still suffer from frequent downtime, security breaches, and settlement delays that make them feel riskier than cash. When uptime isn’t guaranteed, digital money becomes a liability instead of a tool.

This is where many blockchain projects miss the point. A payment network that can’t guarantee reliability, compliance, and continuity simply won’t be adopted at scale—especially by governments, utilities, or large institutions.

ADI Chain approaches this differently.

Payments as Public Infrastructure

ADI Chain is built as an Ethereum Layer 2 using the ZKsync stack, but the architecture goes further. The key idea is flexibility at the regulatory level. Instead of forcing governments and institutions to adapt to a one-size-fits-all blockchain, ADI allows them to deploy their own Layer 3 networks with rules that match their compliance needs.

That matters. It means a government can maintain regulatory oversight without sacrificing speed or transparency. It means payment providers can operate within local laws while still benefiting from blockchain-level settlement times. And it means infrastructure can scale nationally, not just experimentally.

Because ADI runs on a decentralized network of nodes, the system remains functional even when parts of the network go down. This isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s critical for regions where outages are common and resilience is non-negotiable.

Faster Settlement, Lower Costs, Real Impact

Traditional payment systems in emerging markets often take three to five business days to settle. ADI Chain settles transactions in seconds, operates 24/7, and does so at extremely low cost—often fractions of a cent.

For individuals, this means sending money without worrying about timing, intermediaries, or hidden fees. For businesses, it means better cash flow and fewer operational risks. For governments and utilities, it means transparent, auditable systems that actually work at scale.

This isn’t about replacing everything overnight. It’s about offering infrastructure that’s finally aligned with how modern economies function.

Stablecoins That Fit the Region

One of the most compelling aspects of ADI’s approach is its support for regulated, regionally relevant stablecoins—starting with a Dirham-backed stablecoin regulated by the UAE central bank.

In regions where local currencies are fragmented or unstable, a trusted regional unit of account can change how people save, trade, and plan. Instead of juggling dozens of illiquid currencies, users can transact in something stable, familiar, and widely accepted—without needing access to traditional foreign exchange markets.

This is where blockchain stops being theoretical and starts being practical.

Why This Feels Different

What makes ADI stand out isn’t just the technology—it’s the framing. Payments aren’t treated as an app feature or a speculative product. They’re treated as rails: foundational systems that economies depend on.

Emerging markets don’t need more experiments. They need infrastructure that works under pressure, scales with growth, and respects regulatory realities. ADI Chain feels like it was designed with those constraints in mind.

If the future of payments in emerging economies is going to change, it won’t come from abstract promises. It will come from systems that are reliable, compliant, fast, and accessible at a national level.

ADI’s vision points in that direction a different idea of payments, built for the realities of the world most people actually live in.