MetaComp: Asia’s Revolut for business payments

[SINGAPORE] As cryptocurrencies hit some road bumps, Singapore fintech player MetaComp believes the real work of building the industry’s “Web 2.5” plumbing is beginning to pick up.

The company, which recently raised US$35 million across two funding rounds within three months – including backing from Alibaba – aims to build “Asia’s Revolut” right from the city-state.

But unlike the London-headquartered fintech firm’s retail-focused inspirations, MetaComp is strictly targeting businesses: institutional clients whose cross-border supply chains require faster and more reliable settlements than what traditional banking can offer.

This need for speed has become particularly urgent as geopolitical volatility surges globally, threatening to disrupt traditional financial flows. In the first two months of 2026 alone, the US captured Venezuela’s then president Nicolas Maduro and kick-started a war in Iran.

“If we look at geopolitics… with sudden tariff policies or tariff shocks, we really don ’t want money to be caught in between or in transit,” said MetaComp co-president Tin Pei Ling, noting that stablecoins offer a channel for “almost instantaneous settlement” when US dollar supply is restricted.

Dr Bai Bo, MetaComp’s chairman and co-founder, believes that filling this specific gap in the Asian market will propel the company to the scale of Ant Group in China or Revolut in Europe.

“I don’t think… anyone in Asean (has) achieved that type of calibre,” he said. “That type of calibre requires a very good payment capability as well as a very strong wealth management capability.”

Two-way strategy

While Revolut has banking licences in Europe and the UK, Dr Bai noted that MetaComp does not aspire to be a licensed bank.

MetaComp holds a major payment institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, while affiliate company Alpha Ladder Finance holds capital markets services and recognised market operator licences. This two-way strategy allows them to serve clients from “end to end”.

Dr Bai also pointed out that Ant Group provides “payment plus wealth products without being a bank”, using a similar licence portfolio strategy.

Hinting at XSGD stablecoin issuer StraitsX, Tin added: “Compared to some of our competitors out there, there are those that started as a crypto native. And there are others that are squarely from the (traditional finance) world (that have) worked their way towards 2.5.”

In comparison, MetaComp has built Web 2.5 into its products from “the get-go”, which means that it does not have to retroactively bolt Web 3.0 crypto capabilities onto traditional Web 2.0 systems.

To do this, Dr Bai said the firm had to build its core banking and compliance tools from scratch, as the software to handle both fiat and stablecoins simultaneously did not exist.

Yet, he was quick to clarify that MetaComp views these industry peers as partners rather than rivals.

He noted that by focusing on the foundational “bottom layer” of the financial pyramid – transaction banking – MetaComp sees itself as the builder of the very infrastructure needed by the broader industry.

“You cannot work in a vacuum here, without counterparties,” he said, emphasising that for the ecosystem to thrive, his company needs the efforts of other financial institutions – including major banks such as DBS and JPMorgan Chase – to succeed as well.

To achieve its goals, MetaComp is targeting clients with “global aspirations” that are managing outbound trade from major Asian markets into other emerging regions, noted Tin, specifically citing Asean, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

A significant portion of such trade originates from China. However, despite securing strategic investment from Alibaba Group as part of its US$35 million funding push, MetaComp must navigate the challenges of operating within mainland China’s regulatory boundaries.

“We absolutely don’t serve any Chinese in China,” Dr Bai clarified, noting that the company serves only outbound China businesses operating internationally to remain compliant with Beijing’s restrictions on cryptocurrency.

Addressing pain points

For the business clients that MetaComp is targeting, waiting for two to seven days to process cross-border payments is a significant “pain point”, even if relying on the US dollar and global payment network Swift.

“The opportunity costs could still be more than the transaction costs itself,” explained Tin. “This will highly restrict the cash that SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) need in order to settle their bills, or even to grow.”

She added that US dollar supply is still “very limited” in certain emerging markets, which hinders quick settlements or even a quick receipt of money.

To bypass the days-long delays of traditional correspondent banking, MetaComp said it has built StableX, a routing system that evaluates fiat and stablecoin liquidity paths in real time. This infrastructure can execute cross-border conversions in under three seconds, it added.

However, the biggest hurdle for institutional adoption remains the “trust deficit” associated with digital assets.

To satisfy regulators and traditional banking partners, MetaComp said it had to build VisionX, a compliance system capable of monitoring risk across both traditional fiat databases and blockchain ledgers simultaneously, generating a single, unified risk rating.

The road ahead

The company’s Web 2.5 approach appears to be gaining ground. MetaComp said it achieved full-year net profitability in 2025, processing some US$10 billion in payment and over-the-counter volume last year.

Its wealth side, which includes assets managed under Alpha Ladder Finance, manages more than US$500 million for over 1,000 institutional and accredited clients.

With Alibaba leading its recent US$13 million Pre-A+ round, MetaComp hopes to tap into its ecosystem to further scale its global infrastructure, added Dr Bai.

As for the endgame, the founders are looking towards the public markets.

Dr Bai indicated that an initial public offering in a few years is on the cards, though he characterised it pragmatically as “just a financing event” on the long journey to building a global platform, rather than a goal in itself.