Alibaba is placing a significant wager on stablecoin-powered cross-border payments as a successor to the correspondent-banking system, backing Singapore-based fintech startup MetaComp in its most recent fundraiser which raised $35m in total.
Alibaba Bets $35m that Stablecoins Will Kill the Correspondent Bank
13 March 2026 - 14:50 CET
By Sandmark staff
Not the first experiment
With a strict regulatory regime around stablecoins and crypto within China, Alibaba has been notably willing to explore options for payments outside the Chinese mainland. As reported by Sandmark, the company partnered with JPMorgan in November on a digital-dollar payment pilot.
This recent investment arrives at a moment of growing frustration with the constraints of traditional international payments' infrastructure. Tin Pei Ling, Co-President of MetaComp, noted correspondent banking has significant faults, including "multi-day settlement cycles, high costs and limited currency coverage."
MetaComp's pitch is that a hybrid model, blending conventional fiat rails with stablecoin networks, can do the same job faster, cheaper and within a clear regulatory perimeter. For a company whose commerce platforms depend on seamless cross-border transactions, a regulated stablecoin settlement network operating under Singapore's laws is a more attractive proposition than the patchwork of correspondent banks that define the current landscape.
Regulatory structure and clarity
Central to Alibaba's calculus is MetaComp’s location in Singapore. Rather than operating in the legal grey zones that much of the global crypto industry is looking to escape, MetaComp holds a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). This authorizes it to provide digital-payment token and cross-border money transfer services.
The structure gives institutional clients a legally accountable counterparty operating under one of Asia's most respected financial oversight regimes. Ling said that "the future of cross-border finance is neither purely traditional nor purely digital, it's the integrated Web2.5 architecture where fiat rails and stablecoin networks operate as one."
She added that the company is targeting expansion in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. These are regions where demand for compliant, real-time cross-border settlement is growing fastest and where the shortcomings of legacy banking tend to be most acute.
