Singapore payments company dtcpay has completed a $25 million Series A round, bringing Japan’s SBI Group onto its shareholder register as the firm expands stablecoin payment infrastructure for merchants and businesses.
Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India led the original financing in April. SBI Group joined later as a strategic investor, putting money in through its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte Ltd and through the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund. Genedant Capital and existing backer Kwee Liong Tek, a prominent Singaporean business leader, also took part in the extended round.
dtcpay holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, one of the stricter regimes in Asia for digital asset firms. The company was founded by Alice Liu and Band Zhao and builds infrastructure that lets businesses accept, store and transact in stablecoins alongside fiat currency. Its real-time swap engine settles between stablecoin and fiat balances, cutting the friction that has kept many merchants out of digital asset payments.
Stablecoins have become attractive to payment companies because they move across blockchain rails but behave economically like cash. A dollar-denominated token can cross borders in minutes without the correspondent banking chain that traditional settlement requires, and the merchant does not need to hold a volatile asset such as bitcoin to benefit. Settlement risk drops too, because a payment that finalizes on-chain in minutes carries less counterparty exposure than one routed through several banks over days. Reconciliation is simpler as well, since each transfer carries a verifiable record that both sides of the transaction can check independently.
“We are strengthening our infrastructure, deepening partnerships with global financial institutions, and expanding into new regulated markets to make stablecoin payments as seamless and trusted as traditional payment rails,” said Band Zhao, group chairman of dtcpay, in the announcement.
The use cases lean on corridors where banking is slow or expensive. Cross-border payroll, supplier payments and remittances all fit the pattern: money that today moves through several intermediary banks over days can settle in one hop. For businesses operating across Southeast Asia, where payment fragmentation is high and settlement times vary widely by country, that difference shows up directly in working capital and in the cost of hedging currency exposure between invoice and payment.
SBI’s bet on payment rails
SBI Group’s entry is the detail most market watchers will note. The Japanese conglomerate has built one of the larger crypto franchises among traditional financial groups, with exchange ventures and a long record of backing digital asset infrastructure across Asia. Joining through both a direct subsidiary and a university-linked innovation fund signals the investment is strategic rather than a passive check.
For dtcpay, the capital funds expansion into new regulated markets and deeper ties with global financial institutions. The company sits on the merchant-facing layer of the market rather than competing with exchanges, a position that puts it alongside firms building the plumbing for stablecoin settlement rather than trading venues.
A crowded but growing field
The raise lands in a market that has grown quickly. Total stablecoin supply sits near $291 billion, with daily transfer volume of roughly $66 billion, according to market trackers. Tether’s USDT remains the largest token at about $183 billion in circulation, followed by Circle’s USDC near $75 billion. Both issuers have spent the past year pushing deeper into regulated distribution, which raises the bar for smaller payment firms that want to compete on service rather than on token issuance.
Singapore has positioned itself as a hub for the sector, with a licensing regime that gives firms a regulated base in one of the region’s most important financial centers. Other licensed players are moving the same direction. HashKey’s settlement platform recently partnered with ONERWAY on cross-border stablecoin payments, an example of the corridor-by-corridor buildout now underway across the region.
Regulatory clarity has helped the funding environment. The United States passed the GENIUS Act last year, creating a federal framework for dollar-backed tokens, and Tether has since launched a US-regulated stablecoin through a nationally chartered bank. Europe’s MiCA rules are in force, and jurisdictions from Dubai to Singapore have issued their own frameworks for payment token issuers. Each new framework narrows the compliance gray zone that kept corporate treasurers away from the asset class.
Incumbents are not standing still. Card networks and large banks have run their own stablecoin settlement pilots, and tokenized money-market funds from BlackRock and State Street now compete for the same institutional cash that stablecoin issuers hold. A payments startup raising $25 million is betting on speed and corridor focus rather than scale alone.
What the money buys
dtcpay’s stated priorities mirror what investors in the sector generally fund: licensing in additional markets, settlement capacity, and partnerships with banks that let corporate clients move between fiat and tokenized dollars without leaving the regulated system. The company has not disclosed a valuation for the round.
There are limits to the model. The GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from sharing interest income with customers, which caps one revenue lever, and compliance costs in regulated markets are high. Execution across multiple jurisdictions, each with its own rules, is the hard part, and merchant adoption has historically lagged behind infrastructure buildouts in payments.
The bet behind the round is straightforward. If stablecoin settlement becomes standard for cross-border commerce, the firms holding merchant relationships and payment licenses will capture fee income on volume that today moves through correspondent banks at higher cost and slower speed. Whether that volume arrives fast enough to justify the valuations paid in this round is the question the sector still has to answer.