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Enterprise interviews

As part of preparing the Cardano Vision and Strategy 2030 drafts, STORM Partners ran 11 semi structured interviews with senior leaders at the following organisations:

  • Maerki Baumann (ARCHIP) – Swiss private bank, crypto focused unit

  • Incore Bank – Swiss digital asset bank

  • Cité Gestion – Swiss private bank, now part of EFG

  • Kaleido Private Bank – Swiss private bank running on Incore infrastructure

  • Hublot – luxury watch brand

  • Bondy – for profit reforestation and carbon credit company

  • ICRC – International Committee of the Red Cross

  • MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières

  • UNICC – UN International Computing Centre

  • Vodafone / Pairpoint – global telco and IoT network operator

  • Fongit – Geneva based innovation foundation and incubator

The calls focused on three simple questions:

  1. Where blockchain could realistically solve a problem in their organisation.

  2. Under which conditions Cardano would be a serious option.

  3. What would block them over the next 12 to 24 months.

The insights below are aggregated by sector. They do not attribute any specific statement to a named organisation.

1. Regulated finance and banking​

Covers the Swiss banks in the sample, including digital asset providers and private banks that already support ADA custody or staking.

What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano​

  • Tokenisation that actually simplifies issuance, lifecycle management, and corporate actions instead of adding extra overhead.

  • Simple, explainable yield and access products for their clients, with clear risk frameworks.

  • Robust infrastructure with predictable fees, clear SLAs, and reliable operations.

  • Credible stablecoin rails and on and off ramp options in Swiss and EU markets.

What stops them from adopting​

  • Compliance and regulatory uncertainty. Internal control functions are not comfortable with how to monitor and audit on-chain activity.

  • Legacy core banking systems that are expensive to integrate with new rails.

  • Tokenisation markets that are still slow, with limited client demand and unclear revenue upside.

  • Limited internal capacity. They cannot spare teams to co design experiments that are far from current revenue.

When this segment would consider Cardano pilots​

  • Pilots are co-funded, light touch on internal IT, and aligned with existing digital asset roadmaps.

  • External partners carry most of the delivery and maintenance load, while banks keep governance and compliance oversight.

  • The regulatory story is clear enough that they can defend it to auditors and supervisors.

  • Solutions are chain agnostic at the product level, with Cardano as one rail among several.

Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030​

  • Cardano does not win banks by “being decentralised/robust”, but by cutting cost and complexity while staying inside regulatory guardrails.

  • Strategy 2030 should treat regulated finance as a distinct workstream that needs focused effort on stablecoins, compliance tooling, and enterprise delivery partners.

2. Humanitarian and impact organisations​

Covers humanitarian NGOs, a UN treasury infrastructure body, and an impact ReFi venture working on reforestation and carbon credits.

What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano​

  • Transparent but privacy-aware tracking of funds, aid, or climate impact, with strong protection for vulnerable populations.

  • Tools that reduce operational costs in supply chains, cash transfers, and reporting to donors and authorities.

  • Stablecoin and payment rails that can function in fragile markets and reduce fees.

  • Funding mechanisms that support long term operations, not just short term pilots.

What stops them from adopting​

  • Deep scepticism of “shiny innovation” projects that generate blogs but do not survive budget cuts or staff turnover.

  • Privacy, security, and political risk concerns around putting operational data on public infrastructure.

  • Limited internal capacity to own, maintain, and govern solutions once external funding or consultants leave.

  • Need to preserve neutrality and independence while working with any technology partner.

When this segment would consider Cardano pilots​

  • The pilot targets a concrete operational problem with clear cost savings or impact metrics, not generic “blockchain for good”.

  • Designs are privacy preserving and frugal from day one.

  • There is a credible plan for maintenance and support beyond the initial grant period.

  • Governance and narrative remain under the control of the humanitarian actor, not the chain.

Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030​

If Cardano wants to be the chain that “systems that cannot afford to fail” can trust, it needs to prove it in a few serious humanitarian and impact deployments. Strategy 2030 should explicitly address privacy preserving infra, long-term support models, and sober expectations around humanitarian work.

3. Consumer and luxury brands​

What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano​

  • Digital product passports that support authenticity, resale, servicing, and product storytelling for physical goods.

  • Customer engagement tools that are brand aligned and low friction, where blockchain is invisible to end users.

  • Efficiency gains that reduce manual work in current Excel and email heavy processes.

What stops them from adopting​

  • Blockchain is not a core priority compared with other digital and operational initiatives.

  • Internal stakeholders are wary of reputational risk from volatile crypto markets or hype driven projects.

  • Lack of plug and play solutions that integrate with existing CRM, ecommerce, and warranty systems.

When this segment would consider Cardano pilots​

  • The use case clearly improves an existing process or campaign, instead of being an add on gimmick.

  • Delivery can be handled by external partners, with minimal internal workload and no disruption to brand processes.

  • The brand can separate speculative token markets from core customer experience.

Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030​

● Consumer and luxury brands will be fast followers. Cardano should position itself as a safe, design friendly platform for digital product passports and loyalty, backed by agencies and integrators that can absorb complexity.

4. Telco, IoT and innovation ecosystems​

Covers a global telco and IoT platform operator plus a public innovation foundation that supports hundreds of startups.

What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano​

Scalable infrastructure for machine identity, IoT trust anchors, and machine to machine payments.

  • Clear, chain agnostic funding and support programs their startups can plug into, without forcing a single protocol choice.

  • Stablecoin rails and tokenisation primitives for cross border payments and asset fractionalisation in their verticals.

What stops them from adopting​

  • Heavy legacy systems and long change cycles in large enterprises.\

  • Regulatory and internal governance friction around new payment and data flows.

  • Requirement to remain neutral as public or multi stakeholder institutions, so they cannot “pick Cardano” as an exclusive partner.

  • Limited access to local teams that can deliver robust pilots on realistic budgets.

When this segment would consider Cardano pilots​

  • Cardano solutions plug into their existing tech stacks, instead of demanding bespoke architectures.

  • External partners carry the delivery work, with clear SLAs and roadmaps.

  • There are obvious, repeatable funding lanes, for example specific Catalyst tracks for enterprise pilots or startup cohorts.

Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030​

  • Enterprise and startup ecosystems expect blockchains to integrate into their existing funnels. Cardano will need to build reference architectures, co-branded startup programs, and chain neutral collaboration models if it wants to show up in these deal flows.

5. Cross sector messages from enterprise interviews​

Across banking, humanitarian, impact, luxury, telco, and innovation participants, three simple messages repeat:

5.1 Solve sharp, high-value problems, not “blockchain in general”​

Every organisation came with a short list of painful workflows where they might consider new tech: cross-border payments, traceability, digital product passports, treasury efficiency, fundraising and donor engagement. The Cardano Strategy 2030 should therefore invest in sector-specific use-case discovery (per vertical and region) and then run a full BD pipeline around those use cases: from problem framing and regulatory mapping, to solution blueprints, to co-funded pilot design and execution. The gap today is not ideas, but a structured path that connects real enterprise pain points to concrete Cardano pilots.

5.2 Compliance, UX, and support decide adoption.​

Technical alignment and “values fit” with Cardano are appreciated, but they only translate into pilots when three conditions hold:

(a) compliance teams can understand and audit transactions,

(b) the UX is simple enough that internal teams do not have to retrain everyone, and (c) there is a credible partner on the hook for integration, support and incident response.

For banks and NGOs in particular, this means shipping reference architectures with ready-to-use risk memos, audit paths, and playbooks for regulators, alongside wallet and L2 UX that hides on-chain complexity behind familiar interfaces. This maps

cleanly to Strategy 2030’s focus on “invisible” usage, enterprise-grade security, and developer experience, but the interviews suggest execution is still patchy and needs to be productised.

5.3 Adoption will be chain agnostic.​

Most participants are open to using Cardano but will not commit exclusively. Cardano needs to be the practical choice where it is genuinely better, not just philosophically closer.

Large enterprises, multilateral organisations and NGOs repeatedly stressed that they will not commit to “one chain only”.

  • For treasury and payments work they expect to route flows where liquidity, compliance comfort and integration effort are best.

  • For tokenisation and traceability, they expect interoperability with existing stacks (SAP, Oracle, core banking) and other L1s.

Strategy 2030’s emphasis on cross-chain interoperability, the partnerchain framework, and L2s or sidechains is therefore not optional but central. Cardano’s edge will come from being the best execution and trust layer for specific high value workflows, while fitting into a multi chain, multi vendor reality. Hybrid application patterns, where Cardano based partnerchains (such as Midnight) can act as compliance, data, or privacy extensions for other chains rather than strict competitors, are a key part of that story.