PhotonPay has raised $40 million in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital, giving the Hong Kong-founded payments fintech fresh capital to expand a stablecoin-focused platform that connects digital-dollar liquidity with local bank rails, cards and corporate payment workflows.
SBI Group joined the financing alongside follow-on backing from IDG Capital, GL Ventures and Lightspeed Faction. Blacksheep Technology served as exclusive financial adviser. PhotonPay did not disclose a valuation.
The company said it will direct the proceeds toward multi-asset wallet capabilities, international card issuing, local clearing infrastructure in selected markets and an agent-ready financial execution layer. That last project places the funding round beyond conventional cross-border payments: PhotonPay is developing controls intended to let automated software initiate financial tasks within predefined authorization, spending and transaction policies.
PhotonPay reported annualized transaction volume of $65 billion as of August 2026. It said it holds 34 payment and financial licences or regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and serves more than 200,000 business customers in over 200 countries and territories.
Building stablecoin settlement into business payments
PhotonPay's pitch centres on a practical constraint in stablecoin payments: businesses need to move between on-chain balances and the domestic payment systems used by suppliers, employees, contractors and customers.
Its API-first system combines multi-asset wallets, foreign exchange, cross-border transfers, local clearing and card issuing. The design is intended to allow businesses to use stablecoin liquidity for settlement while retaining access to fiat accounts and familiar spending tools.
The company said customers can open local collection accounts in 17 markets and accept funds in more than 60 currencies. Its payout network covers more than 100 routes across domestic clearing systems, bank transfers and digital wallets, including 74 major local e-wallets.
PhotonPay reported that 97% of payouts arrive within hours or on the same day, while 68% are delivered in real time. Those figures, if maintained as payment volumes rise, would give corporate users a clearer operational case for stablecoin-linked treasury systems: faster inbound funds can be converted into supplier payments, payroll disbursements or card spending without waiting for a separate cross-border banking cycle.
The expansion plan also includes local clearing infrastructure, a costly and operationally demanding part of international payments. Direct access to domestic systems can reduce the number of intermediaries in a transaction, though coverage and performance vary substantially across jurisdictions.
PhotonPay already connects to Pix in Brazil and SPEI in Mexico, two domestic payment systems that are central to business and consumer transfers in their respective markets. The company also lists J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered and DBS among its institutional partners.
Cards remain a major distribution channel
Card issuing has become one of PhotonPay's fastest-growing products. The company said it issued 4.4 million cards in the 12 months through August, a 275% increase from the preceding year.
Cards give a stablecoin-linked financial platform a route into ordinary corporate purchasing, where merchants and staff generally expect payments to clear through established card networks rather than blockchain transactions. For companies managing dispersed teams or supplier networks, virtual and physical cards can also provide transaction-level controls that are harder to apply to open bank transfers.
PhotonPay provides embedded-finance infrastructure as well, allowing other businesses to integrate accounts, payment functions and card issuing into their own products. It reported more than 100 enterprise and platform partners using those services.
That distribution model may be as consequential as its direct business offering. Rather than needing every customer to adopt a separate treasury platform, PhotonPay can supply regulated payment functions behind software products that already serve merchants, marketplaces or global workforces.
Automated payment controls move closer to deployment
The company's agent-ready execution layer is designed for a period in which AI software increasingly assists with business operations. In May, PhotonPay and Mastercard completed a live demonstration of an agentic payment using a tokenized PhotonPay card on existing global card networks, according to the company.
PhotonPay said it plans to support the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, a standard that enables AI systems to connect with external tools and data sources. In practice, the proposed integration would make account information, balances, cards and payment functions accessible through developer-ready interfaces.
The more difficult part is controlling what an automated system can do once it gains access. PhotonPay said its planned policy-based framework would enforce authorization rules, spending limits and transaction controls for automated workflows. It is also developing AI-assisted risk-review tools that would send complex cases for human assessment.
Those safeguards will determine whether automated payment tools become useful for routine corporate tasks such as reconciling balances, funding cards or preparing supplier payments. A system able to move money but unable to distinguish approved activity from an exception would create a material treasury risk, particularly for businesses operating across multiple currencies and jurisdictions.
A larger operating footprint
Founded in Hong Kong in 2015, PhotonPay now operates 16 offices and employs nearly 600 people, according to the company. Its 34 licences and authorizations give it a regulatory footprint that is difficult for a smaller software-led stablecoin provider to replicate quickly.
The Series C financing gives PhotonPay resources to deepen that regulated infrastructure while extending its stablecoin settlement products into spending, collections and automated financial operations. Its challenge will be to make those pieces work as a unified system for businesses that care less about the underlying rail than about whether funds arrive, can be used locally and remain subject to clear controls.
Want deeper insight into stablecoins’ role in Asia’s payment rails? Explore our guide on stablecoin adoption in Asia today.
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