Singapore-based stablecoin payments firm dtcpay has closed its $25 million Series A round, with Japan’s SBI Group joining as a strategic investor. The announcement came Friday, September 18. SBI invested through two vehicles: its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte Ltd and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund.
Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India led the initial tranche of the round, which was first announced in April. Genedant Capital and existing investor Kwee Liong Tek, a prominent Singapore business figure, also participated. The company raised a $16.5 million pre-Series A round in June 2023.
No valuation was disclosed. dtcpay said the fresh capital will fund product expansion and its merchant network, including a revamped business portal for enterprise clients.
“We did not raise this round to sustain what we have built,” said Alice Liu, founder and CEO of dtcpay. “We raised it to fundamentally change how money moves across borders.”
What dtcpay does
dtcpay runs stablecoin payment infrastructure for merchants and enterprises, converting digital dollar balances into settled payments at the point of sale. The company holds a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which lets it handle digital token services under one of the clearer regulatory regimes in Asia.
The firm has been building out its stablecoin partnerships. It is a distribution partner for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and serves as a founding validator for Circle’s Arc network, the payments-focused blockchain Circle launched for institutional settlement. Those positions put dtcpay inside two of the largest corporate stablecoin ecosystems rather than building its own token.
Singapore has become a testing ground for this model. The city-state’s Payment Services Act gives stablecoin issuers and processors a licensing path that most larger jurisdictions still lack, and MAS has pushed licensed firms toward real-world payment use rather than trading. Payment firms licensed under the act can serve customers across the region from a Singapore base, which is part of why the sector has clustered there.
The company’s path to this round has been gradual. It started as a crypto payment processor serving luxury retailers and tourism merchants in Singapore, then repositioned around stablecoin settlement as corporate interest grew. The pre-Series A in 2023 funded that shift, and the current round completes the financing arc at roughly triple the earlier size.
Merchant-facing products remain the core of the plan. The revamped business portal announced alongside the funding is aimed at enterprise clients that want to accept stablecoin payments and settle in fiat, with reconciliation tools that map onchain transactions onto standard accounting records. Getting that plumbing right is unglamorous work, and it is where most payment processors actually win or lose their merchant relationships.
Why SBI is buying in
SBI Group is one of Japan’s most active corporate investors in digital assets. The Tokyo-listed financial group runs a crypto exchange through SBI Holdings, holds a long-standing partnership with Ripple, and has backed crypto ventures across trading, custody and payments for years. A stake in a Singapore-licensed payments firm fits that pattern and gives SBI a foothold in Southeast Asian merchant settlement.
The Ripple connection is worth noting. SBI has co-operated with Ripple on distribution in Japan for years, and dtcpay is a distribution partner for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. The investment links the two ends of that chain, with a Japanese group backing an Asian processor for the same token it already distributes at home.
Japan itself is moving on stablecoin regulation, with a framework for yen-backed and foreign-issued tokens now in force, and Japanese financial groups have been examining cross-border settlement use cases. SBI’s dual investment vehicles in this round, one corporate and one tied to its innovation fund with NTU and Kyobo, suggest the group sees dtcpay as both a portfolio position and a technology partner.
The round also reflects where venture money is going in crypto. Payments and stablecoin infrastructure have taken a growing share of funding this year while trading and consumer apps have faded. Corporate investors, rather than traditional crypto funds, have driven much of that shift, and SBI joining a round already anchored by Vertex Ventures fits it.
The competitive picture
dtcpay competes in a field that includes Stripe’s stablecoin payments work, Bridge, which Stripe acquired, and regional processors across Southeast Asia. Merchant acceptance remains the bottleneck: consumers rarely hold stablecoins, so processors win business by letting merchants accept them without changing how they settle.
Cross-border settlement is the prize. Corporate payments between Asian economies still route through correspondent banking chains that take days and cost percentage points. A stablecoin rail that settles in minutes at near-zero marginal cost attacks exactly that margin, which is what Liu’s statement points at.
The Singapore round is one of the larger capital injections into an Asian stablecoin payments company this year. Investors have grown more selective since 2024, and firms without licences or real merchant volume have struggled to raise at all. dtcpay clearing a Series A with a strategic investor puts it in the smaller group of payment startups that did.
Whether $25 million is enough to build the network is another question. The company did not disclose revenue, merchant count or transaction volumes, and its position depends heavily on the RLUSD and Arc partnerships holding up. But the round closes with a strategic investor rather than a fund, which usually means the money comes with distribution attached.
The next marker to watch is the business portal launch and any disclosed merchant numbers. If dtcpay publishes volume figures in the coming quarters, the round will be easier to judge. Until then, it stands as a vote of confidence from a well-connected investor rather than proof of market position.