Alibaba's New Cross-Border Payment Infrastructure: $20 Million Bet on Latin American Stablecoin Firm VelaFi
- Core Viewpoint: Alibaba's investment arm participated in the funding round for Latin American fintech company VelaFi, aiming to leverage its stablecoin payment infrastructure to optimize Alibaba's cross-border payment and settlement experience in emerging markets, reducing transaction costs and time.
- Key Elements:
- VelaFi completed a $20 million Series B funding round, with total funding exceeding $40 million. Investors include Alibaba's Alibaba Investment, XVC, and Ikuyo.
- VelaFi's core business is providing enterprises with on/off-ramps between fiat currency and stablecoins, as well as cross-border payment solutions, deeply integrated with local instant payment systems in Latin America.
- Alibaba's investment in VelaFi aims to utilize its instant, low-cost stablecoin settlement technology to serve the growth needs of businesses like AliExpress in emerging markets such as Latin America.
- VelaFi, part of Galactic Holdings, has processed billions of dollars in transactions for hundreds of enterprise clients, expanding its business from Latin America to the US and Asia.
- VelaFi ensures compliance through strict KYC/KYB procedures. Its model acts as an "accelerator" for traditional bank payment rails, enhancing the efficiency of cross-border capital flows.
Original Title: "Alibaba Invests in a Latin American Stablecoin Financial Company"
Original Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
A financial infrastructure platform deeply rooted in Latin America, dedicated to bridging the fiat and crypto worlds, is emerging.
On January 12, VelaFi officially announced the completion of a $20 million Series B funding round. Following this round, VelaFi's total funding has exceeded $40 million. This financing amount not only validates market confidence in the stablecoin payments sector.
Notably, Alibaba Investment, an investment arm under Alibaba, appeared among VelaFi's investors.
Why Alibaba?
Alibaba Investment is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba, registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2000.
As one of the world's largest B2B and B2C trading platforms, Alibaba is acutely aware of the pain points in cross-border payments—high fees, lengthy settlement cycles, and exchange rate volatility risks.
VelaFi's stablecoin infrastructure enables instant, low-cost cross-border settlements. VelaFi's deep presence in emerging markets like Latin America overlaps with the key growth regions for AliExpress and Alibaba.com.
Through this investment, Alibaba is likely exploring the use of stablecoin technology to optimize its local payment and merchant settlement experience in emerging markets.
Who Else is Betting on VelaFi?
This funding round for VelaFi was led by XVC and Ikuyo, with participation from Alibaba Investment, Planetree, and existing investor BAI Capital, among others. To date, VelaFi's total funding has surpassed $40 million.
One of the lead investors, XVC, is a dual-currency (RMB and USD) fund management firm headquartered in Beijing. Its partner, Boyu Hu, has invested in star companies like Kuaishou, Weee!, Walnut Coding, and Bawang Chaji.
The other lead investor, Ikuyo, is a Tokyo-listed company. This is not their first collaboration. As early as November 2025, when VelaFi entered the Japanese market, the two parties had already established a strategic partnership, jointly becoming co-organizers of a stablecoin settlement association to provide more transparent and cost-effective settlement services for exporters and global enterprises.
Who is VelaFi?
VelaFi is part of Galactic Holdings. Galactic Holdings was founded by a Chinese founding team. Its co-founder and CEO, Maggie Wu, is also the CEO of VelaFi and the founder of the well-known venture capital firm Krypital Group.
Galactic Holdings owns the crypto wallet TruBit, the trading platform TruBit Pro, and the cross-border payment solution for businesses, TruBit Business. In 2025, the original enterprise-level business, TruBit Business, underwent a formal brand upgrade to become VelaFi.
Currently, starting from Latin America, VelaFi has expanded its business footprint to the United States and Asia. According to VelaFi, it has served hundreds of enterprise clients to date, processing billions of dollars in payment transaction volume.
Core Model
VelaFi focuses on the B2B market. To ensure compliance, all enterprise clients must pass rigorous KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYB (Know Your Business) verification before accessing VelaFi's service network.
Its core model can be summarized in three points:
1. Fiat On-Ramp & Off-Ramp Channels
This is VelaFi's foundational business, aiming to solve the industry challenge of freely converting between fiat currency and stablecoins.
On-Ramp: Allows a business's end-users to pay using local fiat currency, while the business receives equivalent value in stablecoins (like USDT/USDC) or assets like Bitcoin.
Off-Ramp: Businesses send stablecoins to VelaFi, which then uses its local banking network to deposit funds into users' bank accounts in local fiat currency.
2. Global Payments and Cross-Border Transfers
Another service is global payments, facilitating cross-border fund transfers via a "Fiat A - Fiat B" path. For example, a Mexican company paying a Brazilian supplier. Previously, this required complex intermediary banks. Now, through VelaFi, the payment is made in Pesos (MXN), and the recipient receives Reais (BRL).
VelaFi acts like an "accelerator" built on top of traditional banking rails.
Its core advantage lies in deeply integrating with Latin America's mainstream instant payment systems: Mexico's Interbank Electronic Payment System (SPEI), Brazil's Instant Payment System (PIX), and Colombia's Payment System (PSE). By linking these traditional payment rails with stablecoin liquidity, VelaFi enables cryptocurrency to no longer just float on-chain but to potentially be truly applied in cross-border e-commerce, labor outsourcing, and international trade.
