Singapore-headquartered payments firm dtcpay has completed an enlarged Series A round of $25 million, closing the round with Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Group joining as a strategic anchor investor. The company announced the completion on Friday, framing it as institutional validation of its push to make stablecoin payments as seamless as conventional financial services. The total now stands at $25 million, more than double the initial close.

The first tranche — a $10 million first close led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, part of Vertex Holdings under Temasek Holdings, Singapore's state-owned investment company — was announced in March. The round subsequently drew Singapore-based Genedant Capital, a fund manager licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore that oversees more than $2 billion in assets under management and advisory, alongside returning backer Kwee Liong Tek.

“We did not raise this round to sustain what we have built. We raised it to fundamentally change how money moves across borders,” founder and chief executive Alice Liu said in the company's official statement.

A Stablecoin-First Payments Stack

dtcpay built its payments stack early. The firm rolled out a system for in-store and online checkout in both fiat and cryptocurrency in 2023, then phased out Bitcoin payments in 2024 to concentrate on stablecoin-only transactions. The shift reflects the core appeal of stablecoins for payments: as blockchain tokens pegged to fiat currencies, they sidestep the price volatility that made pricing goods in Bitcoin difficult for merchants. Its flagship product today is a Visa-linked card that lets users spend stablecoins and fiat at more than 150 million merchant locations worldwide.

The regulatory footprint is unusually broad for a company of this size. dtcpay, a brand of Digital Treasures Centre Pte. Ltd., is licensed in Singapore, holds an Electronic Money Institution licence in Luxembourg authorizing regulated payment services across the European Economic Area, and carries additional registrations spanning Hong Kong, Australia, the United States and Canada. The company notes that its investor mix is designed to be functional, bringing scaling expertise alongside capital.

SBI's Japan-Southeast Asia Corridor

The strategic logic became clearer in the details disclosed on September 18, which outlined how the investment was structured and where the capital will be deployed. The capital arrived through two Singapore-registered SBI vehicles — subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte. Ltd. and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund, an early-stage technology vehicle focused on Southeast and South Asia — and is earmarked for merchant acquisition, commerce portal build-out, consumer app features and entry into additional regulated markets.

dtcpay's chairman said the company is strengthening infrastructure, deepening ties with global financial institutions and entering new regulated markets “to make stablecoin payments as smooth and trusted as traditional payment channels.”

The licensing backbone underpins that ambition. Singapore's central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, lists Digital Treasures Centre on its register as a Major Payment Institution authorized for account issuance, domestic and cross-border money transfer, merchant acquisition, e-money issuance and digital payment token services.

Merchant reach is the growth engine, and the company has been building acceptance across its home market as well as abroad. An integration with WalletConnect, the network connecting digital wallets to decentralized finance applications, makes stablecoin payments available from more than 700 wallets, while the Visa card taps a network where stablecoin settlement has surpassed a $20 billion annualized run rate across more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs. At home, dtcpay powers stablecoin acceptance for retailers and hotels including department store Metro and the Capella Singapore, reinforced by a collaboration with BNB Chain.

For SBI, the deal extends an active regional build-out. The group completed a controlling investment in Singapore's regulated exchange Coinhako in July, and its subsidiary SBI Digital Practice recently finished a direct yen-to-won stablecoin pilot with Kyobo Life that bypassed the US dollar entirely — a break from conventional cross-border settlement, where the US dollar typically serves as the intermediary currency between non-US pairs. The group said the dtcpay investment strengthens the digital asset corridor between Japan and Southeast Asia.

The disclosure names the investors and the round stage but does not state a valuation, and no valuation figures were provided in the announcement. With the capital already earmarked for merchant acquisition, portal build-out, consumer app features and new regulated markets, execution against those commitments is the concrete marker to watch as the round moves beyond the close.