PhotonPay Secures Tens of Millions of Dollars in Series B Funding Led by IDG Capital

"What Will the Next-Generation Value Network Look Like?" By Ren Qian

"AnYong Waves" has learned exclusively that PhotonPay (hereinafter referred to as "PhotonPay"), a global AI-driven digital financial infrastructure platform, recently completed a Series B financing round of tens of millions of dollars, led by IDG Capital, with Hillhouse Capital's GL Ventures, Enlight Capital, Lightspeed Faction, and Shoplazza participating, and Blacksheep Technology serving as the exclusive financial advisor.

Before founding PhotonPay, CEO Chen Min led the development of overseas payment systems at Baidu's international division. Around 2014, Baidu was pushing its diversified business portfolio into global markets. During that pioneering era of Chinese internet companies going abroad, Chen, working as an architect, confronted firsthand the extreme fragmentation and complexity of global payment infrastructure.

"Many people think the problem with global payments is speed, but fundamentally, it was never a unified system to begin with," Chen said bluntly. "PhotonPay's original intention wasn't simply to move money faster. We were asking: what kind of financial infrastructure do globalized enterprises actually need? Can we derive a fundamental solution that accommodates global complexity?"

It was this Day 1 thinking that led the company — perhaps not the loudest player in the payments space, and still in its early stages — to choose the hardest and heaviest path from the very beginning: building proprietary systems and direct clearing connections through upfront investment, establishing its own moat on the bedrock of compliance.

Put more plainly, PhotonPay doesn't rely on the existing logic of external systems. Instead, it built from scratch an independent account system, clearing engine, and risk control middle-office — transforming cross-border payments from "slow, expensive, and complicated" into a global platform where transactions feel as simple as a local transfer.

If we trace the evolution of the payments industry, every technological cycle has produced a giant that redefined "infrastructure" — PayPal solved the trust problem in early e-commerce, Stripe flattened the access barriers of the mobile era.

What PhotonPay is targeting is a deeper challenge than mere "payment connectivity" — the liquidity drain caused by fragmentation in global capital networks. Unlike its predecessors, which focused on consumer-facing or standard SaaS integration, PhotonPay concentrates on serving globalized enterprises that require "sophisticated capital operations," providing them with a deeply embedded, compliant, and highly transparent digital financial foundation.

This is fundamentally about the trade-offs of "critical choices." Chen still vividly remembers those late nights in 2015, at the outset of his entrepreneurial journey. At pivotal moments of business transformation, he repeatedly gamed out his options: stay in the comfortable zone of the familiar, or plunge completely into the uncharted deep waters of payments? The pure satisfaction of "solving unknown problems by reconstructing underlying logic" was his instinctive pursuit as a technologist.

PhotonPay's DNA carries the personal imprint of this engineer-CEO: he dislikes empty noise, but values system stability and architectural soundness; he doesn't chase short-term traffic fads, but is willing to spend three years refining an underlying platform invisible to outsiders.

Part 01

"Middle-Office" Transformation of the Global Payment Network

PhotonPay's commercial logic rests on deep insight into the extreme fragmentation of global payment infrastructure.

For most globalized enterprises, payment appears to be nothing more than a "withdraw" button. But behind that button lies a heterogeneous, disconnected underlying network woven from tens of thousands of banks, card networks, and clearing systems.

"For us, interfacing with overseas banks often felt like dealing with an impenetrable 'black box,'" Chen recalled to AnYong Waves. "Each discrete payment method might cover only 3-5% of local market share. If you just stitch together external channels, not only is the ROI extremely low, but you never gain real control."

The payment industry has diverged into two fundamentally different survival strategies —

The first is "channel-type," or "addition." Aggregating existing channels and wrapping a polished UI over the fragmented network. This model starts fast and stays asset-light; its core moat lies in sales capability and rate subsidies.

The second is "native-type," or "reconstructing infrastructure." Rather than relying on any single bank's ledger system, building from scratch a global financial infrastructure supporting multi-currency, multi-tier account structures.

PhotonPay chose the latter. It first "subtracted," then "multiplied."

Over several years, the technical team deconstructed global payment behavior into its smallest atomic units: accounts, ledgers, foreign exchange, card issuance, and acquiring. These capabilities were then abstracted and packaged into standardized underlying modules — like Lego bricks. Through flexible combination of these modules, PhotonPay could transcend the financial constraints of different countries and achieve true global reach.

This wasn't born of technical purism, but from Chen's prediction of the industry's endgame: "channel-type" companies would eventually become "sales agents" for banks. Rather than painting over existing walls, better to dig into the foundation and derive that "fundamental solution" compatible with global complexity.

From the 2019 launch of its MVP through the following three years, the team poured the vast majority of resources into building the underlying system, until the "unified platform" officially went live in 2021. With this Series B round, a fintech entity with an independent "digital foundation" is beginning to take shape.

Specifically, traditional payments are "linear": funds must traverse multiple intermediary banks, with long chains, high fees, and T+3 delays. In PhotonPay's system, this chain is restructured into a "flat" model: based on a global multi-currency wallet system, ledger entries are settled instantly — funds moving within the platform are "received" immediately, achieving second-level settlement with zero FX loss. Meanwhile, by building a global local clearing network with direct connections to local clearing nodes across regions, intermediary bank nesting is reduced and capital routing is compressed to the minimum.

Through this model, PhotonPay has helped tens of thousands of enterprises reduce capital circulation costs by over 75%.

Part 02

"Co-Building" with Customers Through Technology

If underlying infrastructure is PhotonPay's skeleton, then its distinctive customer ecosystem is the blood flowing through it.

For a long time, the payment industry's narrative has revolved around "standardized trade." In traditional arenas like B2C e-commerce collection, the industry has built an extremely mature but also highly homogeneous service system. This system is like a "public power grid" covering the globe — adept at handling high-frequency, standardized single scenarios, but often lacking the flexibility to respond to the explosive growth of the emerging digital economy.

PhotonPay chose to go deep into "high-complexity scenarios" ignored by traditional paradigms.

In advertising and marketing, international logistics, digital entertainment, SaaS, and other sectors, the complexity of capital flows far exceeds imagination: it's no longer simply "receive" and "pay," but a "precision choreography of funds" involving multi-party management, high-frequency small-amount settlements, and dynamic compliance verification.

A game development team from Chengdu might need to pay royalties to 300 freelance artists across 50 countries, while simultaneously receiving dollar settlements from Google Play and the App Store. A digital marketing agency might manage thousands of advertising accounts, requiring uninterrupted 7x24-hour top-ups to Facebook, TikTok, and Google. In these scenarios, finance departments have near-zero tolerance for error. Capital liquidity is no longer just a number on a spreadsheet, but a lifeline determining business survival — even a minor settlement hiccup gets infinitely amplified across complex global business chains.

Traditional banking systems lack "business perception": they can only process underlying instructions like "A transfers to B," but cannot comprehend complex scenarios like "real-time allocation of $5,000 across 3 ad buyer teams." Generic standard payment tools, lacking flexible account hierarchy architecture, similarly struggle to support such non-standard,精细化 demands.

PhotonPay's solution is "embedded finance." By transforming complex global financial instructions into programmable API interfaces, payment capabilities can be natively integrated with enterprise business systems — upgrading payment from a single node of capital flow to a schedulable global operational capability, thereby supporting enterprises' global expansion.

"API integration isn't just data exchange, but the internalization of financial capabilities," Chen told AnYong Waves. When payment functions embed into customers' business engines like modules, PhotonPay achieves instant response with every transaction. This "co-building" model creates deep stickiness between PhotonPay and its customers based on underlying logic — "We're no longer an independent third-party service provider, but an invisible partner supporting their global expansion."

Part 03

What Will the Next-Generation Value Network Look Like?

In the financial industry, technology is only the entry ticket; trust is the real passport.

For a fintech company starting from Hong Kong, the biggest challenge in building a global payment network is often not code, but how to earn the trust of top global financial institutions. PhotonPay's partner roster includes J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, DBS, Mastercard, and others — representing the most core clearing nodes in the global financial system. Establishing "deep direct connections" with these institutions is key for payment companies to reduce costs and improve speed.

But this path hasn't been easy. Chen frankly admits that finance is fundamentally a game of trust. "We face extremely stringent screening mechanisms; every business detail undergoes repeated scrutiny by their Asia-Pacific and even global decision-making committees."

PhotonPay has currently obtained more than 10 key financial payment licenses globally, including in Hong Kong, the US, Canada, the UK, and Poland, and continues expanding its compliance footprint. To extend service boundaries from single capital flows to deeper dimensions of asset management and financial services, PhotonPay is also pursuing additional high-value qualifications (such as Hong Kong Type 1, 4, and 9 licenses).

On compliance and risk control, PhotonPay has similarly chosen a "heavy technology" route. AnYong Waves learned that it plans to launch intelligent upgrades to its underlying system in the coming years, relying on proprietary AI risk models and multi-dimensional data to build anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-fraud defenses. Chen revealed that PhotonPay is internally exploring the possibility of using AI to redefine risk control standards, attempting to shift from traditional "passive defense" to "precision prediction."

With the completion of the Series B financing, PhotonPay's strategic landscape is undergoing qualitative change. Chen and his team are thinking further ahead: when the traditional segmented correspondent banking model grows increasingly burdensome faced with complex globalization demands, what will the next-generation value network look like?

First is the introduction of blockchain technology (DLT). Chen has observed that top global banks (such as J.P. Morgan) are already using internal blockchain networks (such as Kinexys) for instant global capital allocation.

"Imagine transferring hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars out and converting them into $100 million in a US account. Under the traditional SWIFT system, this isn't just a relay lasting several days, but also comes with high fees and opaque FX losses. But based on blockchain's distributed architecture, capital flow is no longer a leap across space, but more like a near-instantaneous value mapping — days of waiting compressed to minutes. This brings not just speed improvement, but the certainty most scarce for globalized businesses in highly volatile environments," Chen explained.

This "certainty" is precisely the next-generation digital financial infrastructure PhotonPay is deploying.

According to sources, PhotonPay is planning to use smart contracts to reshape the automation and transparency of global settlement. In Chen's endgame assessment, this system will operate efficiently in parallel with existing banking networks in the medium term, and in the long term, it is highly likely to become the mainstream solution for payments in emerging markets.

Second is the extension of financial value-added services. As platform capital scale grows exponentially, deeper demands are awakened: preservation and appreciation of global liquid assets.

"When customers have hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars sitting in PhotonPay accounts, their needs no longer stop at payments," Chen said bluntly. From the traditional perspective, such funds often become "idle costs" during lengthy clearing cycles. But on the digital foundation PhotonPay has built, customers begin to expect liquidity value on par with top commercial banks.

Therefore, PhotonPay expects to take the Hong Kong market as its starting point from 2026, and based on local financial licensing qualifications, roll out a series of diversified innovative financial products for overseas markets in phases, including balance wealth management and flexible credit.

In Chen's view, this isn't blind expansion for profit, but the natural evolution after infrastructure matures. When the platform uses technology to eliminate the seams in global payments, the next step is naturally to help customers manage the "value in those seams." "We don't touch the funds ourselves, but through strategic underlying connections, we help them seamlessly direct idle capital to quality interest-bearing assets at globally licensed institutions."

This evolution from payment channel to comprehensive financial services provider is a path giants like Alipay, Square, and Stripe have all traveled. PhotonPay is now following this proven trajectory, exploring its own version adapted to B2B industry characteristics.

Additionally, PhotonPay is accelerating the internationalization of its organizational structure. It has established 11 global operating centers and built a team of over 300 people. Beyond R&D centers in Shenzhen and Shanghai, PhotonPay has local teams in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, the UK, and the US. Chen stated that in the coming years, the core management team will become further internationalized, bringing in more local talent with global vision.

"We're processing large volumes of complex cross-regional settlements, such as connecting capital routing between London and Hong Kong, or supporting US brands in efficient local supplier clearing in Southeast Asian markets." According to Chen, Global to Global business has gradually become a new engine for PhotonPay's revenue growth.

Layout by Du Meng | Images from Visual China

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