Solana Foundation hires Binance, Polygon veterans to lead institutional and payments push

The Solana Foundation announced two senior hires aimed at accelerating its institutional finance and payments initiatives. Former Binance global chief marketing officer Rachel Conlan will serve as chief strategy officer, while Polygon Labs veteran Jamal Raees will become general manager of payments.

Leadership roles and focus areas

Rachel Conlan will oversee institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring more companies and users onto Solana. Her mandate includes moving financial firms from interest to implementation of Solana‑based products.

Jamal Raees will focus on payment companies, enterprises and ecosystem participants building payment services on Solana. He highlighted the network’s performance, reliability and developer ecosystem as key advantages for large‑scale payment use cases.

Institutional activity on Solana

According to the foundation, Solana processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026 and hosts more than $4.5 billion in real‑world assets (RWAs). Tokenized equity supply has exceeded $620 million. Notable participants include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Circle, Ondo Finance and WisdomTree.

Recent institutional projects include:

• A tokenized Japanese equity fund launched by SBI Global Asset Management and DigiFT.
• Tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs added by Ondo Finance.
• Stablecoin settlement and cross‑border transfer pilots with Mastercard, Western Union and Worldpay.

Payments development and partnerships

The foundation’s 2026 developer platform for financial institutions integrates issuance and payment modules, with a trading module slated for later in the year. Early adopters such as MoneyGram, KSNet and Shinhan Card have tested stablecoin settlement and merchant payment solutions on Solana.

In May, Solana partnered with Google Cloud to launch Pay.sh, a gateway that enables AI agents to pay for API requests using stablecoins, supporting payments as small as fractions of a cent.

Strategic expansion in Japan

Solana’s partnership with SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group created SBI Solana Global, targeting stablecoins, tokenized assets, cross‑border payments and AI‑agent payment services. The joint effort has already introduced tokenized Japanese stocks and a yen‑backed stablecoin (JPYSC) for settlement.

Broader leadership team

These appointments join other 2026 hires, including Michael Coates as chief information security officer, reflecting the foundation’s focus on security, institutional growth and payment infrastructure.