Regulators Start the Clock, Engineers Build the Rails: Can the Creator Economy Scale?

A new labor force is taking shape—one that doesn’t clock in, file payroll taxes in the traditional sense or interact much with a local employer. It earns in dollars, stablecoins or platform credits, withdraws through digital wallets and builds an audience across borders before ever establishing a career at home. These are the creators and digital freelancers reshaping how work is done and where value is generated.

The numbers show the scale: The global creator economy is poised to grow to $480 billion by 2027, up from $250 billion in 2023. India is home to over two million active digital creators who influence more than $350 billion in consumer spending. Indonesia counts an estimated 12 million creators, producing the highest output in Southeast Asia. In Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa alone, approximately 17.5 million people earn income through online freelancing.

Yet, the financial infrastructure supporting these workers hasn’t progressed at the same pace. High fees, week-long delays and bank access barriers are preventing creators from easily receiving the money they’ve already earned. That gap has opened a door that new fintech builders are racing to close, wiring lightweight, mobile-first systems that treat a $50 gig with the urgency of a wire transfer. What’s emerging is a structural rewrite of how labor, income and economic inclusion are defined—and who gets invited in.

The creator economy reaches a tipping point

In 2025, creator labor finally began receiving the policy attention it had long been missing. California led the charge with its Freelance Worker Protection Act, which is now in effect statewide. It requires written contracts and timely payments for every gig, forcing platforms to rethink how they manage creator payouts. Meanwhile, in the E.U., the Netherlands has resumed enforcement of misclassification laws. This move puts pressure on platforms to reevaluate their freelance creator relations, even though broader bloc-wide rules on payouts and employment status are still in development.

But industry players don’t wait for regulation to catch up. Over the past year, the most forward momentum has not come from policy but from a wave of infrastructure upgrades. Across the ecosystem, dollar-backed stablecoins have been integrated into traditional payment networks, mobile wallets have been tailored for the unbanked and fee structures have evolved to support even the smallest transactions. Some platforms are experimenting with near-instant cross-border settlements, using stablecoins to lower fees and shorten payment times. From Latin America to Southeast Asia, this infrastructure is advancing rapidly, even if most creators still remain tethered to legacy systems.

Much of this momentum is coming from places where formal job markets haven’t kept pace and where earning online is quickly becoming the norm. The infrastructure taking shape isn’t built for influencers in Manhattan. It’s built for mobile-native creators in Nairobi and Mumbai, where digital income often doubles as a first step toward broader financial access.

When regulation, technology and demographics align, markets start to show signs of breaking open. But until adoption becomes widespread, an outdated financial system continues to hold millions back.

Where the money still gets stuck

For millions of creators, getting paid still feels like navigating a maze built for someone else. Cross-border fees remain notably high, especially for smaller payouts. The Financial Stability Board estimates that the average business-to-person fee is 2 percent, twice the G20’s official target. Micropayments fare worse: sending just $200 across borders still incurs average fees of 6.6 percent. For a video editor in Lagos withdrawing $100 per week, that’s the equivalent of losing half a day of work each month just to cover fees.

Speed isn’t much better. According to 2024 data from Swift, 90 percent of cross-border payments across 40 countries reach the destination bank within an hour. However, regulators are increasingly focused on the lag between the payment hitting the bank and the funds being credited to the end customer. Only 43 percent of Swift-based cross-border payments actually reach the end customer’s account within that same hour. For creators who depend on timely cash flow to cover essentials like rent or data top-ups, that delay can be destabilizing.

Even when the infrastructure is in place, access isn’t guaranteed. Many platforms delay payments by requiring creators to meet a fixed withdrawal threshold, often holding funds for weeks. When Silent Roar Media dropped its threshold from $250 to $50, enabled by global payments company TerraPay, hundreds of rural creators were finally able to cash out. And all of this assumes creators are even connected to the financial system. PayPal, for instance, has recently begun offering cross-border payment options that don’t require a bank account, part of a broader effort to reach underserved users.

All of these are structural issues. While a 2 percent fee or a week-long delay may feel negligible in Manhattan, in Nairobi, it can mean skipping groceries. Multiply that across 150 million emerging-market creators, and the result is a system that siphons income before it can generate stability. So, where does the real fix begin?

How the payout bottleneck finally starts to ease

Here’s the catch: for creators, fast payments only matter if they reach the wallet in time, in full and without a dozen hoops to jump through. That’s exactly where innovation is focused. 

Fintech giant Fiserv now routes stablecoin payments through 10,000 banks and millions of merchants, bypassing the slow, expensive correspondent layer. Visa has also partnered with Yellow Card Financial to launch stablecoin settlement across African corridors, citing fee reductions of up to 80 percent. The result? Creators in Nairobi or Jakarta can now receive small payouts in seconds instead of days.

But speed alone isn’t enough. Without legal clarity, it introduces as many risks as it removes. That’s why some payroll platforms, like stablecoin payments firm Rain, are embedding compliance directly into the payout layer. Before the first dollar moves, creators upload a contract, answer prompts and let an API manage the legal rails. The takeaway: platforms remain compliant and avoid back-tax headaches, and creators get paid through channels that are actually designed to scale.

The infrastructure is gradually catching up to the ambition. Regulators have started the clock, while standardized wallet-level Know Your Customer standards are beginning to let creators’ income stream as effortlessly as video, unlocking billions in spending power from Lagos to Jakarta.

Now it’s about execution. Platforms that still treat payouts as an afterthought will watch their talent migrate to faster, cleaner alternatives. The real winners will be those building the picks and shovels of a borderless creative economy—embedding labor law, compliance and treasury management into drop-in code.