According to reports from Animoca Brands, the company has made a strategic investment in stablecoin payment infrastructure provider AllScale to enhance its payment infrastructure across its ecosystem. The move, shared via the company's official X account, signals Animoca Brands' deepening commitment to integrating digital currency payments and artificial intelligence into its ecosystem. The investment represents the next phase of scaling distribution and layering on AI-driven payment capabilities, building on AllScale's recent $5 million seed funding round in late 2025, led by YZi Labs with participation from Informed Ventures and the Aptos Foundation. This development places Animoca Brands at the intersection of two fast-growing sectors: decentralized finance (DeFi) and AI-driven automation, with the company's portfolio spanning hundreds of companies across the digital asset ecosystem that could become potential customers for AllScale's payment tools.
As reported by AllScale, the investment will support its stablecoin-based payment infrastructure that connects traditional finance with on-chain transactions through a single payment stack. The platform serves more than 1.5 million registered wallets and supports cross-border payments through its stablecoin infrastructure, with the company having integrated its payment systems with BNB Chain, giving it access to one of the more active Layer 1 ecosystems for everyday transactions. The system provides checkout, payroll, invoicing, and pay-in and pay-out services, allowing businesses to send and receive stablecoin payments across borders while settling in their preferred fiat currency. For Animoca Brands, which oversees a vast portfolio of blockchain-based games, metaverse projects, and digital property rights, having a robust and scalable payment rail is increasingly critical as the company moves beyond simple token trading toward practical, real-world utility. Stablecoins have become a critical bridge between traditional finance and blockchain networks, offering speed and low cost without the volatility of other cryptocurrencies.
According to the announcement, Animoca Brands and AllScale plan to integrate AI agent-based payment systems into their ecosystems, allowing automated, intelligent software agents to initiate and settle transactions on behalf of users without human intervention. Such a system could be used for in-game economies, automated royalty distributions, or microtransactions within virtual worlds, significantly reducing friction and operational costs. The collaboration signals a strategic push toward practical, scalable payment solutions in Web3, combining stablecoins with AI to reduce friction and enable new automated economic activities. AllScale's self-custody approach is particularly valuable, as most stablecoin payment platforms today operate on a custodial model, meaning they hold user funds. However, AllScale builds non-custodial tools wrapped around stablecoin payment rails, designed so users never surrender custody of their funds while still delivering the smooth user experience of traditional fintech tools. This represents a genuine competitive advantage, as an AI agent can't walk into a bank and open a checking account, but it can hold keys to a smart contract wallet and interact with on-chain payment rails, making programmable and non-custodial payment infrastructure essential for agentic payments to work at scale.
As reported by AllScale, the platform's infrastructure automatically bridges and swaps assets across blockchains so merchants can accept payments regardless of the blockchain network or token used by customers. The system includes transaction screening, on-chain privacy features, and self-custodial settlement with low transaction costs. AllScale focuses on building the backend technology that allows businesses to accept, process, and settle transactions using stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar. The company's target audience includes a diverse group of crypto-native participants: microbusinesses, freelancers, DAOs, and various Web3 projects that need to pay people and get paid without relying on traditional banking infrastructure. By investing in AllScale, Animoca Brands is effectively betting that stablecoins will become the default medium of exchange within its digital ecosystems, with the addition of AI agents further suggesting a vision where transactions are seamless and autonomous. AllScale's non-custodial approach offers a competitive edge over traditional custodial payment platforms, allowing users to retain custody of their cryptocurrencies while enjoying seamless functionality typical of traditional financial technology.
According to previous reports, in April, Anchorpoint Financial Technology, a joint venture backed by Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong, HKT, and Animoca Brands, received a stablecoin issuer licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to launch the Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin HKDAP. Animoca Brands group president Evan Auyang described regulated stablecoins as core financial infrastructure that could support cross-border trade, digital payments, and continuous financial settlement. The strategic investment in AllScale represents a calculated step by Animoca Brands to future-proof its payment infrastructure, with the partnership's focus on AI-driven stablecoin payments offering a clear signal of where the company sees the market heading. As Web3 and AI continue to converge, this collaboration may serve as a blueprint for other firms looking to build more efficient, automated, and user-friendly digital economies. The risk, as always with early-stage infrastructure plays, is execution, as building non-custodial payment tools that match the usability of custodial alternatives is genuinely hard engineering work, while regulatory uncertainty around stablecoins, particularly in the US and EU, adds another layer of complexity to the venture's success.
