Singapore-based stablecoin payments firm dtcpay has closed a US$25 million Series A round after Japan’s SBI Group joined as a strategic investor, the company announced on September 18.
SBI invested through its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte Ltd and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund, extending a round that Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India led earlier in 2026 with an initial US$10 million tranche. The deal brings one of Japan’s largest financial conglomerates onto dtcpay’s cap table as regulated players race to capture stablecoin payments before the market consolidates.
Extending the Round
Genedant Capital, a Monetary Authority of Singapore-licensed fund manager with more than US$2 billion in assets under management and advisory, also joined the round, and existing investor Kwee Liong Tek raised his commitment. Vertex Ventures, part of Temasek-owned Vertex Holdings, led the first tranche and continues to anchor the round.
dtcpay runs a real-time swap engine that settles transactions between stablecoins and fiat currencies, sidestepping the multi-day cycles and layered fees that slow transfers over SWIFT and correspondent banking networks. Founders Alice Liu and Band Zhao built the business around licences, holding a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and an Electronic Money Institution licence in Luxembourg, alongside registrations in Hong Kong, Australia, the United States, and Canada.
This footprint let the firm push stablecoins into everyday commerce, integrating early with WalletConnect to reach more than 700 wallets, issuing a stablecoin-to-fiat Visa Infinite card that spends across more than 150 million merchant locations, and signing Metro as the first department store in Singapore to accept stablecoin payments. Alice Liu, founder and chief executive of dtcpay, described this, saying:
“We did not raise this round to sustain what we have built. We raised it to fundamentally change how money moves across borders.”
Investor Takeaway
SBI Group’s participation adds institutional backing to dtcpay as the company expands its regulated stablecoin payment infrastructure across Asia.
Building the Japan Corridor
For SBI Group, the investment fits a wider digital asset strategy that treats Singapore as its hub in the Asia-Pacific region. The conglomerate operates across securities, banking, insurance, asset management, and crypto assets, and ranks among the sector’s most active institutional investors, with past bets on distributed ledger firms Ripple and R3.
Its Singapore arm, SBI Ven Capital, manages roughly US$700 million and runs the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund that took part in the deal. The fund launched in 2022 to back early-stage digital platform companies across Southeast and South Asia. Eiichiro So, chief executive of SBI Ven Capital, said the investment marks the start of a strategic partnership and reflects SBI’s aim to widen the corridor for digital asset flows between Japan and Southeast Asia through trusted, regulated infrastructure.
Raising Against a Cooling Market
dtcpay’s raise closed as crypto fundraising cooled sharply. Capital flowing into the sector climbed through the first half of 2026, rising from $4.94 billion in the first quarter to $6.72 billion in the second, according to DeFiLlama. The third quarter has reversed that trend, drawing roughly $3.40 billion so far. Monthly totals track the drop, falling from $2.143 billion in July to $675 million in August, with about $586 million raised in September to date.
Payments and stablecoin infrastructure kept pulling capital through the slowdown. Félix Pago led September’s disclosed raises with a $200 million Series C co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst for its WhatsApp-based remittance service, and Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, to build tokenized-equity rails.
Crypto fundraising fell from $2.14B in July to $675M in August, with September reaching $586M so far, highlighting a monthly slowdown. Source: DeFiLlama.Latitude raised a $35 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT to connect stablecoin settlement to local payment systems, and crypto data provider Kaiko added $57 million in an S&P Global-led extension of its Series B.
dtcpay’s round places it within that cluster of regulated payments bets, capital that kept flowing even as the broader market retreated. dtcpay said it will spend the new money on expanding its merchant network and product suite through the rest of 2026, including a rebuilt business portal for enterprise clients and new consumer app features.
Investor Takeaway
Q3 crypto raises have roughly halved to $3.40 billion so far, but capital continues to flow into regulated stablecoin and payment infrastructure, with Félix Pago raising $200 million, Payward securing $100 million, and dtcpay closing a $25 million round.