Walk into iStudio, the gleaming Apple reseller on Orchard Road, and you might notice something unexpected at checkout. Alongside the usual Visa and Mastercard terminals sits an option to pay with USDC—the dollar-pegged digital currency that lives on blockchains, not in bank accounts.
It's a small detail. But for dtcpay, the Singapore-licensed payment firm behind the integration, it represents a bet that crypto's most boring corner—stablecoins—might finally break out of the crypto-native echo chamber and into everyday commerce.
The company has spent the past year quietly assembling what amounts to regulated plumbing: partnerships with WalletConnect, Mastercard, and a handful of mainstream retailers who've agreed to accept stablecoins at the point of sale. Whether this adds up to genuine traction or just another crypto payment false start remains unclear. What's different this time, perhaps, is the regulatory scaffolding.
Threading the Needle Between Crypto and Compliance
In early October 2025, dtcpay formalized a partnership with WalletConnect that routes stablecoin payments from more than 500 digital wallets—MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and hundreds of others—directly to merchant terminals. The deal positions dtcpay as WalletConnect's first Major Payment Institution partner in Asia, a designation that carries weight in Singapore's tightly regulated fintech landscape.
That MPI license, granted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, permits dtcpay to offer Digital Payment Token services alongside traditional payment rails. It's a distinction that matters less to consumers than to the merchants and financial institutions deciding whether to take the company seriously.
The WalletConnect integration sits atop earlier deals that suggest dtcpay is building for scale, not spectacle. A June 2025 agreement with Mastercard Move extended its reach into cross-border payouts. A January 2025 partnership with Primer gave Southeast Asian merchants access to stablecoin payment options. These aren't the kind of announcements that generate headlines, but they're the kind of infrastructure work that makes new payment methods possible—if boring.
Then, in late February 2025, dtcpay launched the Digital Treasures Card, a Visa-backed spend card that converts stablecoins to fiat at the moment of purchase. The strategy here is pragmatic to the point of obviousness: piggyback on Visa's global acceptance footprint rather than try to convince every merchant to install new hardware.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
The more revealing story may be in the retailers willing to flip the switch. Metro Department Store, a fixture of Singapore's retail landscape, began accepting USDT and USDC via dtcpay in late February 2025. It's one of the first mainstream retail chains in the city-state to take stablecoins at checkout, a move that would have seemed improbable even two years ago.
iStudio—an Apple Premium Partner with a dozen locations across Singapore—made a similar leap in late July 2025, announcing it would enable Web3 payments through dtcpay. Buying an iPhone with USDC is still vanishingly rare. But the fact that a certified Apple reseller thinks the integration is worth the trouble hints at some level of perceived demand, or at least a bet that it's coming.
These aren't crypto-native shops chasing hype. They're established retailers with legacy point-of-sale systems and risk-averse operations teams. That they're willing to experiment suggests something has shifted, even if the volume remains negligible.
The Stablecoin-Only Gambit
In December 2024, dtcpay made a choice that surprised some observers: it announced it would support only stablecoins for its Digital Payment Token services beginning in January 2025, phasing out Bitcoin and Ethereum entirely.
CEO Kanny Lee, who joined from digital asset platform OSL in January 2023, has framed the pivot as a response to both regulatory clarity and merchant preference. Singapore's Single-Currency Stablecoin framework—finalized in August 2023—offers a clear rulebook for stablecoins pegged to Singapore dollars or G10 currencies, complete with reserve requirements and redemption guarantees.
That framework appears to have given dtcpay enough certainty to double down on stables and walk away from the more volatile corners of the crypto market. The logic is straightforward, if unexciting. A transaction settled in USDC or USDT behaves less like a speculative bet and more like a cross-border fiat payment. When you're pitching department stores, that distinction matters.
It's also a tacit acknowledgment that Bitcoin's volatility—the very feature that makes it interesting to speculators—makes it unappealing at checkout.
The Money and the Ambitions
dtcpay raised US$16.5 million in a pre-Series A round in June 2023, led by Kwee Liong Tek, chairman of Pontiac Land Group, a Singapore real estate conglomerate. The round also pulled in David Tung, formerly of The Carlyle Group, and Jean-Marc Poullet, a former McKinsey senior partner and chairman of Burgess in Asia.
The company was founded in Singapore in 2019 under the name Digital Treasures Center and rebranded to dtcpay in April 2023. It holds an MPI license from MAS and has publicly stated ambitions to expand into Hong Kong, the Middle East, and the Americas—though regulatory timelines in those markets vary widely, and expansion is easier announced than executed.
The awards circuit has noticed. dtcpay took home "Disruptor of the Year" and "PayTech of the Year" at the 2024 Asia FinTech Awards, and added "FinTech of the Year" in 2025, according to the company.
Awards are one thing. Sustained transaction volume is another.
The Unanswered Question
Whether stablecoin payments at Metro or iStudio will translate into meaningful adoption—or whether they'll remain a curiosity that draws a few early adopters and then plateaus—is still very much an open question.
But dtcpay is assembling the pieces: the regulatory licenses, the payment rails, the retail relationships. If stablecoin payments ever do cross into the mainstream in Asia, the groundwork being laid now will likely matter. If they don't, at least the infrastructure will have been there, waiting.
