MetaComp Closes $35M Pre-A Funding With Alibaba Backing to Build Stablecoin Payment Rails Across Asia and Africa
Singapore | March 13, 2026
Singapore-based payments and wealth platform MetaComp Pte. Ltd. has closed a total of US$35 million in Pre-A funding across two tranches completed within three months, with Chinese technology giant Alibaba among the lead investors in the latest round. The capital will go toward expanding the company's StableX Network, a cross-border settlement layer that routes payments through both traditional banking channels and stablecoin networks, into Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
The fundraise came in two parts. MetaComp raised an initial US$22 million Pre-A round in December 2025, backed by Eastern Bell Capital, Noah, Sky9 Capital, Freshwave Fund, and Beingboom Capital. The follow-on Pre-A+ tranche, announced this week, brought in Alibaba, Spark Venture, and a group of undisclosed institutional investors alongside existing shareholders. Financial advisory firm 100Summit Partners served as exclusive adviser on the deal. Combined with operating cash flows, MetaComp says it now holds over US$100 million in liquidity. Alibaba has not issued its own press release confirming its participation; the investment is disclosed solely through MetaComp's announcement.
MetaComp operates under licenses issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), holding Major Payment Institution status with authorizations for digital payment tokens and cross-border money transfers. Its affiliate, Alpha Ladder Finance, holds separate Capital Markets Services and Recognised Market Operator licenses. Singapore's Payment Services Act framework imposes strict reserve and redemption requirements on MPI licensees that issue single-currency stablecoins above S$5 million; MetaComp operates as a payment router and settlement layer and has not confirmed that it issues stablecoins in that capacity. Other recent MAS licensees in the stablecoin space include Ripple, which received its Major Payment Institution license in December 2025, and Hex Trust, licensed in March 2025.
The company's product lineup spans six components: PayX for fiat payments, WealthX for treasury and tokenized asset access, the StableX Network for institutional settlement, the StableX Engine for multi-stablecoin routing, VisionX Engine (a KYT-integrated compliance layer), and CAMP (Client Asset Management Platform). The StableX Engine, launched in May 2025, handles routing across USDT, USDC, RLUSD, FDUSD, and more than ten additional stablecoins. MetaComp reports over US$10 billion in combined payments and over-the-counter volume for 2025, more than US$500 million in wealth assets under management, and a monthly operational run rate exceeding US$1 billion through its Client Asset Management Platform. The company says it serves more than 1,000 institutional and accredited clients across 30-plus markets.
Co-President Tin Pei Ling, a sitting Singapore Member of Parliament for MacPherson who previously held roles at DCS Card Centre and Grab before joining MetaComp in June 2024, framed the company's approach in a statement. She said that "the future of cross-border finance is neither purely traditional nor purely digital," and described the company's model as "the integrated Web2.5 architecture where fiat rails and stablecoin networks operate as one." Chairman and Co-Founder Dr. Bo Bai, in a statement accompanying the company's December 2025 Pre-A announcement, said that "settlement infrastructure must meet standards of global trade," a position consistent with the company's regulatory-first approach. ("Web2.5" is MetaComp's own term for hybrid infrastructure that connects regulated fiat payment systems with blockchain-based stablecoin settlement.)
Africa's inclusion in the expansion roadmap is worth examining against current data. Sub-Saharan Africa received more than US$205 billion in on-chain value in the year ending June 2025, a 52 percent increase year-over-year, making it the third-fastest growing crypto region globally according to Chainalysis. Stablecoins accounted for 43 percent of all cryptocurrency transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024. Roughly 70 percent of African countries face persistent foreign exchange shortages, a structural condition that pushes businesses and individuals toward dollar-pegged stablecoins as a practical workaround. Stablecoin payment volumes from African markets grew 270 percent in 2025 according to cross-border payment platform XTransfer, though the base remains small: African stablecoin volumes stand at under US$1 billion in B2B payment terms per Artemis Analytics. That gap represents the infrastructure problem MetaComp is positioning itself to solve.
South Asia presents a comparable set of structural conditions. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan each face remittance bottlenecks and sustained foreign exchange pressure, conditions that MetaComp's Pre-A materials identify as target contexts for its network. India's absence from MetaComp's publicly stated geographies is notable given its position as one of the world's largest remittance destinations, and the company has not addressed that gap publicly.
Globally, stablecoin transaction volume reached US$33 trillion in 2025, a 72 percent increase year-over-year according to TRM Labs, a figure that includes on-chain activity beyond direct payments. Artemis Analytics puts actual stablecoin payment volume closer to US$390 billion, still double the 2024 figure. Asia accounts for roughly 60 percent of that payment volume, or approximately US$245 billion. Those figures frame the scale of the market MetaComp is competing to serve as it deploys its new capital.
Alibaba's participation carries strategic weight beyond the capital itself. In November 2025, Alibaba's global B2B platform agreed to use JPMorgan's Kinexys tokenized deposit network for cross-border dollar and euro settlements. Alibaba's commercial footprint across Southeast Asia through Lazada and AliExpress, combined with its logistics arm Cainiao, creates natural corridors where stablecoin settlement could reduce friction for SME exporters in markets like Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. MetaComp has also disclosed plans to build an Agent-Skills-MCP (Model Context Protocol) architecture, which would allow AI-driven software agents to programmatically access its payment APIs, a signal aimed at fintech developers building automated, cross-border payment tooling.
MetaComp has not announced specific market launch dates for the new expansion corridors.