Crypto exchange OKX has launched a standalone application that allows users to convert more than 50 local currencies into U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins, marking the company's latest effort to broaden its business beyond cryptocurrency trading.

The product, OKX Money, went live on Tuesday at the company's OKX Now Product event in Singapore. It targets emerging markets across Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East—regions where OKX argues that currency volatility, limited access to banking, and foreign-exchange fees make it difficult for people to "protect savings and spend globally."

"The key gap for people and institutions is settlement," Haider Rafique, OKX's global managing partner, tells Fortune. He pointed to two specific friction points: a small business should not have to wait days for a bank to settle a payment, and a traveler should not have a credit limit frozen by pending hotel deposits.

"I grew up in Pakistan," he says. "I still have all the receipts of my mom and dad sending me money through Western Union," along with the memory of the fees paid from their "hard-earned savings."

OKX Money customers will be able to hold three dollar-backed stablecoins: Paxos's USDG, Circle's USDC, and Tether's USDT. Stablecoins are blockchain-based tokens designed to track the value of a reference asset—most often the U.S. dollar—and move between wallets over public ledgers rather than correspondent banking chains. According to OKX, the platform offers up to 10% annual yield on eligible USDG balances, virtual and physical cards with no foreign-exchange markup, and referral rewards.

Rafique argued that, compared with legacy financial technology, "crypto has one moat: We are technologically more advanced than traditional finance, whether it's money or markets."

OKX Money is the newest release in a string of product launches by the exchange, spurred in part by a March funding round involving Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. ICE's investment valued OKX at $25 billion; the total amount was undisclosed, though Bloomberg reported the figure at roughly $20 million. The payments push also follows a broader industry pattern, as major exchanges add services such as stablecoin rewards, payment cards, and tokenized assets to build revenue less dependent on trading volumes.

On Sunday, the OKX-ICE joint venture—co-chaired by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a separate platform for round-the-clock trading of more than 60 tokenized U.S. stocks. The SEC's response to that filing, and the app's uptake in its launch regions, will be early tests of how far OKX's push beyond trading extends.

In recent weeks, OKX also introduced OKX Shield, an account-protection program. Beyond security safeguards, Shield promises to reimburse regular users up to $100,000—and the exchange's highest tier of VIP users up to $500,000—in the event of a third-party account takeover. The launch comes as crypto platforms have lost an estimated $2.7 billion to hacks this year, according to security firm CertiK, including nearly $388 million stolen from rival exchange Bitget last month through a vulnerability in a third-party security product.

The debut also lands amid the dominance of dollar-pegged tokens: roughly 97% of global stablecoin market value is tied to the U.S. dollar. That dominance has drawn attention in Washington, where officials hope dollar-backed tokens will fuel demand for U.S. assets, and beyond, where several economies are exploring their own alternatives.

"Every nation should be thinking about this technology," Rafique says. "But the question is: What is the world willing to put their money towards?" He said he would welcome an Asian rival to dollar stablecoins: "If there's an Asia-based, fiat-pegged stablecoin that has stability, people will absolutely trust it." He cited a stablecoin pegged to the Singapore dollar as one he would be particularly interested in.

Rafique described the crypto industry as being at an "inflection point." Even as Bitcoin has rebounded, he said, liquidity in the altcoin market "is just not there." Consumers in markets such as Venezuela and Turkey once "YOLO-ed" into crypto to hedge inflation and chase fast-rising assets.

Yet with access now available to U.S. markets, energy markets, and pre-IPO price exposure, Rafique said emerging-market investors are asking a different question: "Do I really need to bet on the next ape coin?"

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.