The investment targets autonomous agentic payments and self-custody stablecoin tools for microbusinesses and Web3 projects
Animoca Brands has made a strategic investment in AllScale, a startup positioning itself as the first self-custody stablecoin neobank. The deal is focused on building out stablecoin payment infrastructure and exploring what both companies describe as autonomous agentic payments, essentially letting AI agents handle financial transactions without a human clicking “confirm.”
The investment size hasn’t been disclosed.
What AllScale actually does #
AllScale builds non-custodial tools wrapped around stablecoin payment rails. Think invoicing, payroll, and checkout systems for USDC and USDT, but designed so users never surrender custody of their funds. The target audience is a grab bag 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.
The company has integrated its payment systems with BNB Chain, giving it access to one of the more active Layer 1 ecosystems for everyday transactions.
In late 2025, the company closed a $5M seed funding round led by YZi Labs, with participation from Informed Ventures and the Aptos Foundation, among others. The Animoca investment represents the next phase: scaling distribution and layering on AI-driven payment capabilities.
Why Animoca cares about payment plumbing #
Animoca Brands has built its reputation as one of crypto’s most prolific investors, with a portfolio that spans gaming, metaverse, and digital asset infrastructure. It recently announced a funding program specifically targeting developers building AI agent platforms.
For agentic payments to work at scale, you need payment infrastructure that’s both programmable and non-custodial. 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. That’s precisely the kind of infrastructure AllScale is building.
What this means for investors #
AllScale’s self-custody angle is worth paying attention to. Most stablecoin payment platforms today operate on a custodial model, meaning they hold user funds. A non-custodial alternative that still delivers the smooth user experience of traditional fintech tools would represent a genuine competitive advantage.
For traders and market watchers, this investment signals that major crypto investment firms view stablecoin infrastructure as a growth sector worth deploying capital into even when deal terms aren’t publicly disclosed. Animoca’s involvement also brings distribution advantages that a $5M seed-stage company couldn’t access on its own. The firm’s portfolio spans hundreds of companies across the digital asset ecosystem, any of which could become potential customers for AllScale’s payment tools. The risk, as always with early-stage infrastructure plays, is execution. Building non-custodial payment tools that match the usability of custodial alternatives is genuinely hard engineering work. Regulatory uncertainty around stablecoins, particularly in the US and EU, adds another layer of complexity.
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