dtcpay Closes $25 Million Series A With SBI Group Investment

Singapore payments company dtcpay said on Sept. 18, 2026 it had closed a $25 million Series A funding round with a strategic investment from Japan's SBI Group. The round was led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India in April and now adds SBI alongside Genedant Capital and existing backer Kwee Liong Tek. The money will go toward an enterprise portal, app upgrades and a larger merchant network.

The announcement puts a full close on a raise that started earlier in the year. Vertex, part of Vertex Holdings under Temasek Holdings, led the first tranche. SBI came in through two channels, its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund. CoinDesk reported the completion on Sept. 18, citing the company statement.

"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. Her remarks came in the statement announcing the close. Liu said SBI's backing showed that compliant stablecoin payments were being built now rather than promised for later.

dtcpay builds payment rails that let businesses and individuals take in, hold and spend stablecoins next to fiat money. Its swap engine converts between stablecoins and fiat at the point of payment, which cuts out the multi-day waits and layered fees of correspondent banking. The company holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and an Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg, with registrations also in Hong Kong, Australia, the United States and Canada, the release lists.

The licenses shape where the company can operate. The Singapore license covers domestic payment services while the Luxembourg permission opens the European Economic Area. CoinDesk noted the same license footprint, adding that the company also handles asset conversion and custody with a Visa linked card for spending stablecoins as cash.

That card is one of the company's oldest retail bets. Its partnership with Visa produced a stablecoin to fiat Visa Infinite card that spends across fiat and stablecoin balances at more than 150 million merchant locations worldwide. The company was also early in Asia to plug into WalletConnect, which spread its acceptance across more than 700 wallets, according to the announcement.

On the merchant side, dtcpay sells point of sale tools that take Digital Payment Token payments in stores. It worked with BNB Chain on retail adoption and signed Metro, the first department store in Singapore to take stablecoin payments, along with hospitality names such as Capella Singapore. Those deals gave shoppers a live checkout where stablecoins clear beside cards and cash, the release says.

What the money buys

The next build is aimed at business clients. A revamped portal for enterprise customers sits at the top of the roadmap for the rest of 2026, with new consumer features inside the dtcpay app arriving beside it. The company said the raise lets it keep its current pace of delivery while widening the merchant base that accepts its rails.

"The next chapter for dtcpay is about scale. We are strengthening our infrastructure, deepening partnerships with global financial institutions, and expanding into new regulated markets," Group Chairman Band Zhao said. His comments appeared in the same statement. Zhao said the goal was payment rails as trusted as traditional ones for moving value across borders.

SBI brings a bank sized network to that plan. The group dates to 1999 and works across securities, banking, insurance, asset management and crypto assets in Japan and beyond. Its Singapore arm, SBI Ven Capital, is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and runs the SBI-NTU-Kyobo fund, which was started in 2022 with NTUitive of Nanyang Technological University and Kyobo Securities, the announcement states.

"dtcpay has made decisive progress in establishing itself as the region's leading regulated payment infrastructure that bridges traditional payments and stablecoins," Eiichiro So, chief executive of SBI Ven Capital, said. So told the company that the investment opens a strategic partnership and a corridor for digital asset flows between Japan and Southeast Asia through licensed rails.

The SBI move fits a wider pattern. The group has bought into Singapore exchange Coinhako, built a stake in Ripple tied to distribution of the RLUSD stablecoin and signed on as a founding validator for Circle's Arc network, as CoinDesk wrote in its account of the round. Each step adds a licensed path between Japanese capital and Southeast Asian commerce.

Genedant Capital rounds out the investor list. The Singapore fund manager is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and oversees more than $2 billion in assets under management and advisory across private equity, venture, public markets and tailored mandates. Its chief executive Quek How Jiang said the firm would open its network of family offices and institutions to support dtcpay's commercial growth, the statement records.

"dtcpay is building the regulated infrastructure that will bring stablecoin payments into everyday commerce," Quek said. Kwee Liong Tek, the Singapore business figure who backed the company before this round, raised his commitment again, a move the company presented as a sign of long term conviction in licensed payment rails.

The company has collected industry prizes along the way. It was named Disruptor of the Year and Fintech of the Year at the 2025 Asia Fintech Awards, and Liu was named Fintech Mentor of the Year at the Singapore FinTech Festival Excellence Awards in 2025. The awards trace a record built on licenses first and products second, the release says.

What the company did not publish is as specific as what it did. The statement carries no valuation, no revenue figure and no split of the proceeds across products or markets. The company did not name a date for the enterprise portal launch or list which regulated markets come next beyond the current license map.

The round leaves dtcpay with a shareholder set that spans state linked venture, a Japanese financial group and private wealth. Vertex brings Southeast Asian scaling experience from inside the Temasek stable. SBI brings banking, brokerage and insurance ties across Japan. Genedant and Kwee bring family office and private capital links across Asia, according to the announcement. The build from here is hiring, shipping and signing merchants.