Current Affairs BTC

SBI Commits $25M to dtcpay's Asian Stablecoin Corridor: Regulated Payments, Real Friction

2026-09-18

Japan's SBI Group has closed its strategic investment in dtcpay, a Singapore-licensed stablecoin payments firm, pushing the company's Series A round to $25 million. It's the kind of move that sounds unsexy until you realise what it actually means: one of Asia's largest financial conglomerates is backing infrastructure to move money faster across borders.

The round itself unfolded in two phases. Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India kicked things off in April 2026 with $10 million. SBI then entered through two separate vehicles—its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte Ltd and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund. Genedant Capital, a Singapore fund managing over $2 billion in assets, also joined, alongside returning backing from Kwee Liong Tek, a prominent local businessman.

So what does dtcpay actually do? It's built itself as infrastructure for regulated stablecoin commerce. The company holds a Major Payment Institution license from Singapore's Monetary Authority and an Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg. That means it can operate across Asia, Europe, and North America without the compliance headaches that plague lighter-touch crypto payment providers. Its product suite is straightforward: real-time stablecoin-to-fiat conversion, self-custody infrastructure, and a Visa-linked card that lets you spend stablecoins at normal merchants. Boring? Absolutely. Which is exactly why institutional investors are interested.

The $25 million is earmarked for three areas: building an enterprise payments portal for business clients, rolling out new consumer features in its mobile app, and expanding the merchant network. The company kept quiet on specific breakdowns, valuation, or revenue—standard practice for pre-profitability rounds.

Now, why does SBI care enough to invest? It's not hard to spot. The group has systematically positioned itself across stablecoin and digital-asset infrastructure. It acquired crypto exchange Coinhako in Singapore. It expanded its stake in Ripple specifically to distribute the RLUSD stablecoin. It's a founding validator on Circle's Arc network. The dtcpay investment fits neatly into that pattern. SBI framed it explicitly: a partnership to build a regulated digital-asset corridor between Japan and Southeast Asia.

That thesis solves an actual problem. Traditional correspondent banking is glacial. SWIFT settlements take days. You stack intermediary fees on top. Stablecoins, by contrast, settle in minutes for pennies—but only if the intermediary is properly licensed. Dtcpay's regulated status lets it bridge that gap without the compliance risk that comes with crypto-native payment platforms operating in legal grey zones.

The company was founded in 2019 by Alice Liu and Band Zhao. Its pre-Series A in June 2023 raised $16.5 million. This completed Series A represents meaningful momentum toward actual scale. Liu said the funding would "fundamentally change how money moves across borders."

Whether it does is another question. The market for regulated digital-asset payments is crowded and expanding. But backing from one of Asia's largest financial conglomerates doesn't hurt. SBI clearly sees something here: not speculation, but plumbing. And sometimes plumbing is the most valuable piece of infrastructure you can own.

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