Hong Kong, October 29th – PhotonPay announced today the completion of a $40 million Series C financing round. This round was led by Blockchain Capital, with SBI Group participating as a new investor. Existing investors IDG Capital, GL Ventures, and Lightspeed Faction continued to invest alongside them. Blacksheep Technology served as the exclusive financial advisor for this transaction.

New funds will be used to support the expansion of the financial operating system ( Financial OS ) centered around the stablecoin PhotonPay, with a focus on enhancing multi-asset wallet capabilities, expanding global card issuance services, strengthening local clearing infrastructure in key markets, and developing capabilities for the agent-based financial execution layer.

As of August 2026, the annual trading volume of PhotonPay reached $65 billion. The company stated that it has obtained 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, serving over 200,000 corporate clients and covering more than 200 countries and regions.

As the application of stablecoins expands from native crypto scenarios to corporate fund management, settlement, and business expenditures, PhotonPay believes that the next phase of global finance is not about making a choice between stablecoins and fiat currencies, but rather their integration. Its Financial OS connects on-chain liquidity with the banks, clearing houses, and card networks that are essential for corporate daily operations.

PhotonPay, the founder and CEO, stated: "Cross-border transfers take just a few seconds. If it still takes several days for these funds to be available for use, then their significance is limited. Stablecoins are accelerating global capital flows, while local clearing and global card issuance connect this liquidity with local settlements and everyday business expenses. Our Financial OS integrates these capabilities, making the underlying infrastructure less noticeable to businesses, yet its importance is unprecedented."

Chen added, "At the same time, enterprise software is becoming increasingly autonomous. AI is shifting financial workflows from fragmented tools that require manual operation to systems that can understand business intentions and coordinate executions across assets, accounts, and financial channels. This lays the foundation for agentic commerce. Stablecoins are changing the way funds flow, and AI are changing how funds are utilized. However, business remains the purpose for which funds exist."

Cross-asset and cross-market capital flows

PhotonPay's Financial OS integrates multi-asset wallets, global capital flows, foreign exchange, local clearing, and global card issuance into a unified API priority architecture. This system provides enterprises with the financial capabilities necessary for managing and allocating funds.

Stablecoins are at the core of this architecture. The multi-asset wallet of PhotonPay connects the liquidity of stablecoins with fiat currency balances, integrating asset exchanges, foreign exchange, and local settlements into a cohesive workflow. This enables enterprises to transfer funds between supported blockchain networks and traditional financial networks, transforming the liquidity of digital assets into the purchasing power for local payments and everyday business expenses.

Underpinning this dual-track infrastructure is the PhotonPay established global financial network. Enterprises can set up local payment collection accounts in 17 key markets and receive funds in over 60 different currencies. On the payment side, the network supports more than 100 payment pathways, covering local clearing systems, bank transfers, and digital wallets, including payments to 74 major local digital wallets. Approximately 97% of payment transactions are delivered to the recipients within a few hours or on the same day, with 68% of those being real-time deposits.

Global card issuance services extend these capabilities to programmable corporate expenditures. Through API of PhotonPay, enterprises and platforms can issue virtual and physical cards, set fine-grained expenditure controls, and integrate card payments directly into their software and automated workflows. In the past 12 months, the number of cards issued through PhotonPay reached 4.4 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 275%.

In addition to its own payment solutions, PhotonPay also opens up its infrastructure through embedded finance to technology platforms, enabling them to natively integrate global account, payment, and card issuance functions into their products. The company currently serves over 100 enterprise and platform partners, extending the reach of its Financial OS to industry-specific workflows.

From financial intentions to agentic commerce

As the AI agent takes on an active operational role, financial infrastructure must evolve from merely providing API connectivity to supporting programmable, policy-driven executions. It is necessary to be able to transform high-level instructions into coordinated financial actions, and these actions must be managed through deterministic control.

In May 2026, PhotonPay and Mastercard completed a real-time agentic payment demonstration using tokenized PhotonPay cards, verifying that transactions initiated by AI can be executed within the existing global card networks.

On this milestone, PhotonPay is working to develop standardized financial interfaces for developers and AI agents. The company plans to support Model Context Protocol ( MCP ), with the aim of making account information, balances, card functions, and payments available in a form of composable financial primitives. This will enable AI agents to securely obtain context and initiate financial workflows within clearly defined authorization boundaries.

To govern this proxy-oriented hierarchy, PhotonPay is developing a policy-based execution framework for enforcing programmable authorization rules, expenditure limits, and transaction-level controls. This framework is designed to enable AI proxies to coordinate financial tasks between supported accounts and assets, while ensuring that all executions are always constrained by clear and enforceable policies set by the enterprise.

PhotonPay is still advancing AI auxiliary risk review capabilities, which are used to identify complex cases that require manual evaluation. The company states that these measures collectively reflect a fundamental principle of autonomous finance: AI can interpret intentions and coordinate tasks, but financial execution must be constrained by verifiable authorization, definitive control, and auditable records.

Chen represents: "Connecting financial networks is just the beginning. The real breakthrough lies in abstracting this complexity into a unified, programmable financial layer, allowing enterprises and AI agents to move from intention to execution within clearly defined boundaries."

Simple on the surface, profound in design.

The promise of Financial OS lies in simplification: to enable enterprises to manage assets, route funds, and execute payments through a unified financial operations layer. However, to achieve this simple experience, a solid financial infrastructure is required at the underlying level.

Although stablecoins have accelerated borderless value transfers, converting this liquidity into local settlements, supplier payments, and corporate expenditures still relies on mature banking relationships, domestic clearing channels, foreign exchange infrastructure, and global card networks. Each market has its own regulatory and operational requirements.

For PhotonPay, building Financial OS means abstracting these fragmented global networks into a programmable, interconnected financial system. The goal is not to eliminate financial complexity, but to manage it within the underlying infrastructure, so that enterprises do not have to deal with these systems themselves.

PhotonPay Chief Compliance Officer JP Pi stated: "AI can simplify the way enterprises interact with financial services, but it cannot replace the infrastructure required to deliver these services. Building local financial capabilities requires years of investment, institutional collaboration, and regulatory communication. Relying solely on software or AI models is not enough to replicate this level of depth. The simple experience that enterprises feel is the result of this extensive work, not a substitute for it."

PhotonPay has established a financial infrastructure that spans stablecoins and fiat currencies, connecting multi-asset exchanges with local clearing networks. The company has formed institutional partnerships with JPMorgan Chase, Standard Chartered Bank, and DBS Bank, and has integrated with local payment systems such as Brazil's Pix and Mexico's SPEI, forming the backbone of this network.

New funds will help PhotonPay to strengthen local clearing and compliance infrastructure in existing markets, and to expand into new jurisdictions, thereby expanding its coverage in areas such as corporate spending, embedded finance, and agentic commerce.

Blockchain Capital Partner Yuanhan Li states: "Companies hope to have a service provider that can handle their cross-currency, cross-market payments, whether they use bank transfers, stablecoins, or cards. Lewison and its team spent ten years building bank relationships, obtaining licenses, and establishing local payment infrastructure to achieve this. We believe that PhotonPay's ability to integrate these capabilities gives it a strong advantage in the process of companies adopting stablecoins for daily payments."

SBI Ven Capital CEO and Managing Director Eiichiro So stated: "As stablecoins become increasingly integrated into the global payment systems, connecting digital assets with traditional financial infrastructure will be key to unleashing their potential in the real world. PhotonPay's established global payment network, along with its Financial OS vision centered around stablecoins, aligns perfectly with SBI Group's strategy of advancing digital financial infrastructure and expanding the practical applications of digital assets. We look forward to supporting the continued growth of PhotonPay and exploring opportunities for strategic cooperation within the SBI Group ecosystem."

About PhotonPay

PhotonPay was established in 2015 and is headquartered in Hong Kong. It is a global fintech company that is building the next generation of financial operating systems centered around stablecoins (Financial OS). Its API priority architecture integrates multi-asset wallets that support both stablecoins and fiat currencies, global capital flows, foreign exchange, global card issuance, embedded finance, as well as local clearing infrastructure, connecting digital and traditional financial channels into a unified financial system.

PhotonPay operates 16 offices globally, employs nearly 600 people, and holds 34 payment and financial licenses as well as regulatory authorizations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The company's services cover enterprises in over 200 countries and regions.

For more information, please visit www.photonpay.com.

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PhotonPay Market Team