Singapore-Based MetaComp Raises Tens of Millions of Dollars in Pre-A+ Round: Monthly GMV Exceeds $1 Billion, Net Profit Turns Positive

"A newer, more complex, but utterly fascinating world." By Qian Ren

"AnYong Waves" has learned exclusively that Singapore-based fintech company MetaComp has recently raised tens of millions of dollars in a Pre-A+ round, led by a strategic investment arm of a major internet company and Spark Venture, among others, with existing shareholders participating pro rata. Just three months ago, MetaComp closed a $22 million Pre-A round backed by multiple top-tier dollar-denominated funds.

According to sources, MetaComp achieved full-year net profitability in 2025. Following this round, combined with other funding sources including net operating cash flow, the company's immediately available liquidity now exceeds $100 million.

MetaComp's Co-President Phyllis Pek has 16 years of legislative experience in Singapore and previously served as CEO of Business China. Fellow Co-President Eddie Hui-Bon-Hoa, who also serves as Chief Operating Officer, previously held several core positions including COO of Société Générale Asia.

This financing comes as MetaComp and its affiliates already provide cross-border payment and wealth management services to clients across more than 30 countries and regions, with monthly payment transaction volume exceeding $1 billion and assets under management surpassing $500 million — thrusting into the spotlight a hidden "middle ground" between the legacy SWIFT order and the crypto world. In industry parlance, it's called Web2.5.

In the monolithic Web2.0 fiat world, especially for large enterprises expanding into developed countries, "tools" like APIs, payment rails, custodians, and compliance service providers are readily available. But in emerging markets across Asia, Africa, and Latin America — countries with relatively underdeveloped traditional payment infrastructure — the pain point of cross-border payments has long ceased to be about fees and speed alone: volume-based access mechanisms lock out vast numbers of SMEs from efficient payment infrastructure, forcing them to hop between platforms at higher costs with greater frequency.

Web2.5 was designed precisely as an "intersection space" to address the real-world cross-border payment pain points of these SMEs — a "hybrid payment architecture" that connects and is compatible with both traditional financial systems and blockchain networks. Simply put, the system simultaneously supports conversion between fiat and stablecoins, enabling T+0 instant settlement for fiat-to-fiat, fiat-to-stablecoin, stablecoin-to-stablecoin, and fiat-to-stablecoin-to-fiat transactions.

But MetaComp's ambitions extend beyond payments alone. It aims to become "the Ant Financial of the Web2.5 world" — just as Ant Financial started with payment rails and then expanded into a more sticky and valuable integrated asset management platform.

Across the global fintech landscape, "payment + wealth management" dreamers are few and far between, let alone in Web2.5 — a newer, more complex world. The combination of payment and wealth management licenses, technical infrastructure, and above all compliance represents the obvious competitive threshold, requiring the construction of an entire operational chain and team.

According to sources, MetaComp and its affiliates began applying for licenses in Singapore in 2019. They have now secured ten licenses covering digital asset trading and custody, cross-border payments, securities, trust, futures, custody, fund management, and RWA token exchanges, and in 2025 initiated license applications in Hong Kong, Switzerland, the UAE, and Canada, among other jurisdictions.

Notably, to support its Web2.5 payment + wealth hybrid business model, all core infrastructure and platforms — including the CoreX core banking system for stablecoins/fiat/securities/RWA tokens, the multi-cloud MPC wallet WalletX, the forex intelligent routing system StableX, the end-to-end fiat-to-stablecoin AML system VisionX, and the future-facing trading agent AgentX — are fully self-developed.

How does money actually flow in a Web2.5 world? Is this truly a fundamental restructuring of global capital and wealth circulation? How is compliance effectively addressed? How will stablecoins coexist with fiat payment service providers in the future? How do traditional wealth products and RWA tokens interoperate? Seizing the occasion of MetaComp's financing, we spoke with Co-President Phyllis Pek.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity —

Part 01

Rebuilding Payment and Wealth Infrastructure from the Ground Up

"AnYong": Can you summarize MetaComp's core positioning in one sentence?

Phyllis Pek: MetaComp and its affiliates build future-facing Web2.5 payment and wealth-integrated platforms for global enterprises, financial institutions, and ultra-high-net-worth clients, providing hybrid fiat and stablecoin payments, hybrid traditional securities and RWA token wealth management, and further enhancing the interaction model and efficiency of compliant financial services through AI.

"AnYong": We've heard that your current client base skews heavily toward global enterprises, with monthly transaction volume already hitting $1-1.5 billion.

Phyllis Pek: To be precise, we serve enterprises going global, particularly into Asia, Africa, and Latin America — manufacturing, gaming, and the digital marketing, advertising, and cloud service companies that follow them abroad. This is currently our largest revenue source. The $1 billion monthly transaction volume is just a starting point; it shows demand remains very strong.

Simply put, when a company sells goods into Asia, Africa, or Latin America, the buyer pays in local currency or locally circulating stablecoins, while the exporter in Hong Kong or Singapore needs offshore RMB or USD. Previously they used traditional channels — slow and expensive. Now, because local currencies in these regions fluctuate so wildly, many buyers already hold substantial stablecoins as hard currency reserves. What we do is help merchants receive these funds compliantly and complete fiat repatriation.

"AnYong": Why is the stablecoin solution particularly well-suited to Asia, Africa, and Latin America? What specific pain points does it solve?

Phyllis Pek: This starts with the limitations of the SWIFT system. Technically, SWIFT could be fast — so why has it never been? Take cross-border payment from Mexico to Singapore: Mexican pesos must convert to USD, travel through SWIFT correspondent banks to Singaporean correspondent banks, then convert to SGD or offshore RMB — a process that typically takes 2-5 days.

The delay isn't technical; it's about interests and costs. When $7 trillion in foreign exchange transactions flow globally each day, as long as funds sit at correspondent banks, the cost of capital to the bank is zero — banks earn from interest spreads. These funds generate no interest while in transit, but banks can deploy them for other businesses. Historical accumulation means they derive massive revenue from this. Plus they conduct FX trading, offer derivatives, and charge at every step — truly "geese flying by get plucked."

This is hardly ideal for businesses. But stablecoins change this dynamic. Mexican pesos convert to USD stablecoins, then directly to SGD in Singapore — the entire process shrinks to roughly 20 minutes, at less than half the cost.

The key is: within a single country, you basically don't need stablecoins — because domestic banking systems in China, Singapore, and the US are extremely efficient. But between countries, especially among Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as soon as you route through USD and SWIFT, efficiency collapses. That's the Web2.5 opportunity.

"AnYong": Do those two qualifiers — "between countries" and "Asia, Africa, and Latin America" — imply relatively limited customer space?

Phyllis Pek: Quite the opposite. Based on publicly disclosed data from major companies, the growth center of gravity for their international business is gradually shifting from Europe and America toward Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This is also an important reason we've secured consecutive rounds of investment from major internet companies. When Chinese exports go to Europe and America, stablecoins offer limited value — which is why you'll hear different people voice different opinions about stablecoins.

"AnYong": The entire payment chain is extraordinarily complex and demands formidable technical capabilities. How have you built your core engine and compliance architecture?

Phyllis Pek: Entirely self-developed. From the start, we hoped to purchase a core banking system, and discovered none existed. No one had built a core banking system encompassing fiat, stablecoins, securities, and RWA tokens. So we began in 2020 with self-developed multi-cloud MPC wallets, then self-developed our Web2.5 core banking system, now upgraded to version 2.1.

The 2025 launch of our StableX network marked a milestone. It's the infrastructure for Web2.5 cross-border payments and forex liquidity, supported by two core technologies: the StableX engine and the VisionX engine.

StableX is a cross-border B2B forex and liquidity intelligent routing engine. Its primary function is supporting fiat-to-fiat, fiat-to-stablecoin, and stablecoin-to-stablecoin conversions with zero-latency (T+0) exchange, achieving optimal cost and time outcomes.

The other engine, VisionX, is an anti-money laundering risk intelligence engine spanning traditional finance and Web3.0, providing real-time unified identity verification and transaction risk visibility across blockchain and off-chain financial systems. Particularly notable is its multi-source AML transaction monitoring engine, integrating multiple KYT tools to make transactions more secure with lower friction costs. In short, we connect fiat currency and crypto asset data chains to achieve comprehensive compliant monitoring.

"AnYong": Large language AI models are transforming industries across the board, yet financial services demand high precision, high security, and compliance. For AI technology companies without financial licenses, development is quite difficult. How are you tackling this?

Phyllis Pek: Last November we completed our first small-scale test of an LLM-powered conversion and payment agent for clients — AgentX — which directly serves customers, calls our Web2.5 core banking system, and through Web2.5 API gateways calls traditional banks for fiat payments or our MPC wallets for stablecoin payments. We're currently conducting further testing on agent financial security, and leveraging latest agent and skills technologies to begin development in other financial service areas including onboarding, compliance, and wealth management.

We believe that future-facing Web2.5 payment + wealth financial services delivered through an Agent + Skills model will substantially reshape how financial services are delivered. But doing this well is genuinely difficult — it requires not only cutting-edge AI technical capabilities but also financial services domain expertise, licensed compliant service capabilities, and underlying API gateways connecting to traditional systems. We're among the rare fintech companies in Asia with this foundation, and this will be the centerpiece of our self-developed work for 2026-2027.

"AnYong": Given such strong liquidity, why raise financing at this moment?

Phyllis Pek: MetaComp was already profitable for full-year 2025 when we raised. In the early stage, we fully funded license acquisition, system deployment, and transaction volume growth to over $1 billion monthly entirely with our own capital. We've proven with performance that there's an opportunity to build a Web2.5 Ant Financial.

The 2025 launch of the StableX network captured something of a perfect storm — as global regulators formulated new stablecoin and digital asset regulatory frameworks, the convergence of Web2.0 and Web3.0 worlds was generating intense reactions in payments, with all industry participants eager to solve integration pain points. That was the macro backdrop.

For a long time, finding suitable partners was our biggest challenge in launching the StableX network. External financing addresses precisely this. Our investors aren't purely financial investors — they offer possibilities for business collaboration, jointly building an institutional-grade partnership network encompassing banks, cross-border payments, and stablecoin ecosystems.

"AnYong": The stablecoin industry has undergone many changes in recent years. Where does it stand now?

Phyllis Pek: If you ask traditional banks or PSPs (payment service providers), they may not consider stablecoins a rapidly growing future. But we see a booming cycle.

If you break down the financial system, it's tiered: the foundation is "teller window" work, Transaction Banking (remittance and settlement); second tier is FX; third tier is fixed-income wealth management; above that are bonds, equities, derivatives; at the pyramid's apex are hedge funds and PE/VC. When no major industry transformation occurs, everyone wants to climb toward the apex, to do higher-order finance. Only when major technological transformation happens does the lowest tier — payment collection and settlement — become worth rebuilding from scratch, and thus the most attractive space again. Then as it matures, that attractiveness transmits upward tier by tier.

The last transformation was the internet. It gave Ant Financial the opportunity to rebuild payments (Alipay), fixed-income wealth management (Yu'e Bao), and lending (Huabei/Jiebei) across different provinces within a single country. This transformation is blockchain technology, bringing the opportunity to rebuild a similar "Ant Financial" journey across different countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America using stablecoins — from Web2.5 payments, to Web2.5 fixed-income wealth management, to Web2.5 lending and wealth management.

Part 02

Financial Super-Integrator

"AnYong": Most fintech companies on the market start with payments and stick to payments. Aren't you biting off more than you can chew?

Phyllis Pek: I'll use UK fintech Revolut as an example. The company's latest valuation is $75 billion — roughly ten times that of domestic payment giants. Why? Because Revolut doesn't just do bank accounts; it's evolved into a "financial super app": card payments, FX trading, stock/ETF investing, cryptocurrency purchases, precious metals, and other investment services — multiple revenue streams. Its 2024 annual revenue grew approximately 72%, and its valuation jumped 70% this year.

The essence of finance is "geese flying by get plucked" and "earning interest spreads." Payments are a pass-through business; wealth management is what delivers higher stickiness and value. Both Ant Financial in Asia and Revolut in Europe have proven this with actual results. We saw this clearly from the company's founding, which is why we applied for the full suite of licenses. Since we've seized first-mover advantage, why not think big?

"AnYong": It's evident that over the past five years, you've arranged everything — license portfolio, staffing, infrastructure construction, system R&D — toward a Web2.5 payment + wealth model.

Phyllis Pek: We've never shied away from this: we're building a stablecoin-based "Ant Financial" in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

On payments, our StableX engine uses strategies and AI algorithms to automatically select optimal routing based on real-time exchange rates and channel costs — whether to route through USD channels or various stablecoin channels.

On wealth management, there's also massive pain. In traditional cross-border remittances, funds in transit for several days earn zero interest. But we've launched Web2.5 wealth management: even if client funds sit in our accounts for just a few hours, we can help them purchase US Treasury tokens or gold tokens, achieving T+0 subscription, redemption, and yield. Meanwhile, for institutional and ultra-high-net-worth clients, we offer longer-term fixed-income wealth management settled in fiat or stablecoins, or fund-based wealth management with digital asset-collateralized lending.

"AnYong": Stripe's largest acquisition ever went to Bridge ($1.1 billion), also a stablecoin infrastructure company — showing how seriously they take this. Are you competitive with Stripe, Airwallex, and other giants?

Phyllis Pek: We operate in parallel worlds, or rather complementary ones. Stripe and Bridge's main battlefield is Europe and America — markets with extremely developed credit card systems where stablecoins offer limited marginal benefit. Our main battlefield is Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where financial infrastructure is weak and the leap directly to stablecoin payments is natural.

As for companies like Airwallex, they excel at front-end customer acquisition and B2B services. But when it comes to the underlying clearing layer for cross-border funds, especially involving stablecoins and complex fiat conversions, they can actually plug into our infrastructure. We provide the underlying "plumbing" and compliance network — there's room for collaboration. MetaComp provides that "missing link" — the stablecoin settlement layer.

"AnYong": But Web2.5 wealth management models remain fairly abstract for most people, especially traditional entrepreneurs going global.

Phyllis Pek: People simply lacked better solutions before. MetaComp's current AUM is $500 million. When we connected the payment and wealth management chain, we found enormous client retention, plus capital from enterprises and ultra-high-net-worth clients that we need to serve intensively.

For example, we serve a cross-border trade settlement and payment company focused on African and Southeast Asian markets. Many of their clients, after receiving stablecoins, don't immediately convert to fiat. At that point, our direct stablecoin wealth management offering becomes extremely practical and attractive. Meanwhile, our platform also lists many quality fiat wealth products. This way, clients on a single platform can allocate to both traditional financial products and on-chain financial products, capturing both yield opportunities.

Additionally, amid increasingly complex geopolitics, from both payment and wealth perspectives, everyone needs to further consider resilient financial services. If traditional financial service pathways become harder to use for political reasons, does business and wealth preservation and appreciation stop abruptly? Or immediately shift to a Web3.0 backup plan? Our Web2.5 offering aims to become a platform where clients can smoothly allocate and adjust between Web2.0 and Web3.0.

"AnYong": Why hasn't anyone done this before?

Phyllis Pek: The timing wasn't right. Previously, payments and wealth were basically separate (apart from the rare exceptions like Ant Financial and Revolut that achieved integration), and Web2.0 and Web3.0 worlds were even more fragmented.

First, the compliance requirements for Web2.0 and Web3.0 were vastly different. Only as regulation gradually matured, and licensed financial institutions serving both ends like us emerged and matured, could compliance integration happen. Our own practical experience has also given us deep respect for companies like Ant Financial and Revolut that managed to integrate payments and wealth, because the license architecture, personnel architecture, infrastructure architecture, and risk control architecture are all different. Achieving integration of stablecoin and fiat payments and wealth is genuinely very difficult. Of course, if we accomplish this step by step, our moat will be extremely high.

"AnYong": On compliance — traditional financial institutions typically steer clear of crypto payments because anti-money laundering is so difficult. How do you address these concerns?

Phyllis Pek: This is a misconception. In fact, blockchain is more transparent than traditional finance. In the traditional banking system, you know who your client is, but once funds cross borders a few times, the trail becomes a black box. On blockchain, the fund trail is transparent — only the wallet is pseudonymous.

What we do is bridge these two. Our VisionX engine combines Web2.0 bank list screening with Web3.0 on-chain analytics tools. We spend heavily each year on AML databases — among the highest in our industry.

Simply put, give me a wallet address and I can see not just its current state, but penetrate 100 layers deep into its historical wallet interactions. Even if it interacted with a sanctioned entity at layer 5, we can calculate a "risk penetration rate."

This makes us one of the rare institutions that can compliantly handle such funds. We spent three and a half years applying for our Singapore license — a period of pure investment with no revenue — but that also constitutes an extraordinarily high barrier.

"AnYong": How does your customer acquisition work?

Phyllis Pek: To date, clients have come to us primarily through demand pull. We've had no time to educate the market; incoming clients are already highly sophisticated — "I want to do this, can you do it?" Our answer is "Yes, please open an account."

"AnYong": Do you believe stablecoin payments are moving from fringe to mainstream? Where's the inflection point?

Phyllis Pek: Not yet. Using electric vehicles as reference, when penetration hits 15%-25%, the trend becomes irreversible. While we haven't fully passed that threshold, the trend is already quite evident in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In Nigeria, for instance, due to local currency depreciation, both consumers and merchants have extremely high acceptance of stablecoins — innovation driven by demand.

When stablecoin payment penetration reaches that critical point, it ceases to be an option and becomes a necessity.

"AnYong": What kind of company does MetaComp ultimately want to become?

Phyllis Pek: We aim to be the licensed stablecoin and fiat hybrid Web2.5 Ant Financial for Asia, Africa, and Latin America, providing integrated compliant payment and wealth services. In the future, when a globalizing enterprise opens an account with us, what they get is: local bank accounts in multiple countries + stablecoin accounts + credit cards + automated wealth yields + real-time collateralized lending. We don't need to be the most dazzling brand — as long as enterprises feel that "opening bank accounts in various countries is faster, sending and receiving money is quicker, costs are lower, funds can earn yield or appreciate, loans are accessible when conditions fit, and there's even a backup plan when geopolitics get complicated" — then we've delivered value.

Layout by Nan Yao | Images by Unsplash

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