Singapore-based payments company dtcpay has completed a $25 million Series A funding round after adding Japan’s SBI Group as a strategic investor, giving the stablecoin payments provider fresh capital to expand its merchant network, enterprise products and regulated international infrastructure.
SBI is investing through two channels: subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund, a Singapore-based investment vehicle focused on digital transformation companies in Southeast Asia.
The expanded round follows an initial $10 million Series A tranche announced in March and led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India. Genedant Capital and existing investor Kwee Liong Tek also participated in the completed round.
The funding takes dtcpay beyond the typical crypto startup story because the company is already operating inside regulated payments infrastructure rather than building solely around digital-asset trading.
Digital Treasures Center, the Singapore entity behind dtcpay, holds a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. MAS records show the company is authorised for account issuance, domestic and cross-border money transfers, merchant acquisition, e-money issuance and digital payment token services.
That regulatory footprint gives dtcpay a relatively broad base from which to combine stablecoins with conventional financial services. Its products allow businesses and individuals to hold, convert and transact using fiat currencies and stablecoins, while its payment infrastructure is designed to let merchants receive digital assets without forcing them to manage the underlying blockchain complexity themselves.
The company has already pushed that model into physical retail. Singapore department store Metro began accepting stablecoin payments through dtcpay, including USDT and USDC, illustrating how merchant acceptance is moving beyond crypto exchanges and online trading platforms.
That trend is spreading across the payments industry. Revolut has begun its own stablecoin rollout in Europe, while exchanges are also trying to turn digital-dollar balances into everyday financial products. OKX, for example, recently launched a dedicated crypto payments app built around stablecoin transfers.
dtcpay has approached the same market from the merchant and infrastructure side. Its point-of-sale systems support stablecoin acceptance, while an integration with WalletConnect extends that capability across more than 700 compatible wallets. The company has also developed card-linked products that convert stablecoin balances for spending through traditional card infrastructure.
Card networks are themselves moving deeper into digital payments. The convergence is increasingly visible in products such as Visa-linked payment infrastructure that connects newer digital transaction models with existing global card rails.
Cross-border settlement is another major part of dtcpay’s strategy. The company joined Circle Payments Network in 2025, connecting its infrastructure with a network designed to allow financial institutions and payment companies to settle international transfers using regulated stablecoins such as USDC.
Other Asian financial groups are testing similar models. HashKey and OneInfinity are exploring stablecoin use in commercial insurance and cross-border payments, including a potential corridor between Hong Kong and the Middle East.
dtcpay also has a European regulatory base. Its Luxembourg subsidiary is registered as an Electronic Money Institution, giving it authority to provide services including electronic-money issuance and payment-instrument activities across supported European Economic Area markets.
The international licensing strategy matters because stablecoin payments remain heavily dependent on the fiat infrastructure surrounding the blockchain transaction. A company may be able to transfer USDC globally within seconds, but customers still need regulated businesses capable of converting local currency, performing compliance checks and delivering usable funds at either end.
That is also why companies built around conventional cross-border transfers remain direct competitors even when they do not rely on stablecoins. The real competition is increasingly over settlement cost, speed, availability and local payout coverage rather than whether a transaction happens on a blockchain.
SBI’s participation adds another dimension to the deal.
The Japanese financial group has been building Singapore into a strategic base for its next generation of digital-asset businesses. Earlier this year, SBI announced plans to acquire a majority stake in Singapore crypto platform Coinhako, subject to regulatory approval, as part of a broader effort to create digital-asset corridors linking Japan with other Asian markets.
SBI has also invested in Fasset and pursued stablecoin-based international remittance infrastructure, making dtcpay’s mix of payment licences, merchant acceptance and cross-border settlement a logical addition to that strategy.
Analysis: SBI Is Buying Into the Payment Rails, Not Just the Stablecoin Story
The easiest way to read this transaction is that SBI has put money into another stablecoin company.
That misses the more important part.
Stablecoins themselves are becoming increasingly interchangeable. USDT, USDC and other regulated tokens can move value quickly, but owning the token layer does not automatically create a payments business.
The harder pieces are distribution, licences, merchants, banking relationships, compliance, currency conversion and reliable connections between blockchain money and local financial systems.
That is where dtcpay is trying to position itself.
The company does not need consumers to care which blockchain settles their purchase. A merchant cares whether it receives the right currency. An enterprise cares whether a supplier gets paid quickly. A finance team cares about reconciliation, liquidity and compliance. If stablecoins improve those processes while remaining largely invisible to the end user, they become infrastructure rather than a crypto product.
That model resembles the broader shift toward on-chain financial infrastructure already appearing elsewhere in the market. The difference is that dtcpay is approaching the opportunity through payment processing and merchant distribution rather than trying to become a bank.
SBI can potentially make that strategy more valuable because it brings something venture capital alone cannot: connections across banking, securities, remittances, crypto trading and institutional finance in Japan and other Asian markets.
No specific SBI-dtcpay payment corridor or product integration has been announced, so it would be premature to assume that SBI’s customers will suddenly begin settling transactions through dtcpay. But the strategic fit creates several obvious possibilities, particularly around Japan-Southeast Asia payments, merchant settlement and institutional stablecoin flows.
The regulatory footprint is equally important.
Payments companies are discovering that stablecoin technology can be copied much faster than licences and local banking relationships can be built. That is why the race for regulated stablecoin infrastructure increasingly involves traditional fintechs and financial institutions rather than only crypto-native companies.
dtcpay’s Singapore and European authorisations therefore function almost like infrastructure assets. They give the company places where it can legally connect tokenized money with conventional financial activity while competitors are still seeking regulatory entry.
But the $25 million round does not solve the industry’s biggest question: whether businesses will use stablecoins frequently enough to justify building an entirely new payment layer around them.
Merchant announcements make good headlines, but recurring transaction volume matters more. The real test will be whether dtcpay can turn retail acceptance, enterprise settlement and international transfers into repeatable payment flows rather than isolated demonstrations of what the technology can do.
There is also no guarantee stablecoins always beat traditional systems. Local instant-payment networks can already settle cheaply in many markets, and companies such as Wise have spent years reducing cross-border costs without requiring customers to touch blockchain assets.
That means dtcpay’s opportunity is probably strongest where traditional rails remain fragmented: cross-border business payments, around-the-clock settlement, multi-currency treasury movements and transactions where several intermediaries currently sit between sender and recipient.
The SBI investment makes that opportunity more interesting because it connects a relatively small payments infrastructure company with one of Asia’s broader financial ecosystems.
The next meaningful milestone will not be another funding round. It will be evidence that those connections produce actual payment corridors, merchant volumes and enterprise transaction flows. If that happens, the $25 million Series A may eventually look less like funding for a stablecoin startup and more like early investment in the plumbing behind a new international payments network.
Shane Neagle is a financial markets analyst and digital assets journalist specializing in cryptocurrencies, memecoins, prediction markets, and blockchain-based financial systems. His work focuses on market structure, incentive design, liquidity dynamics, and how speculative behavior emerges across decentralized platforms.
He closely covers emerging crypto narratives, including memecoin ecosystems, on-chain activity, and the role of prediction markets in pricing political, economic, and technological outcomes. His analysis examines how capital flows, trader psychology, and platform design interact to create rapid market cycles across Web3 environments.
Alongside digital assets, Shane follows broader fintech and online trading developments, particularly where traditional financial infrastructure intersects with blockchain technology. His research-driven approach emphasizes understanding why markets behave the way they do, rather than short-term price movements, helping readers navigate fast-evolving crypto and speculative markets with clearer context.