New Report: Money Moves East - The Stablecoin Corridors in Asia in 2026

In the twelve months to September 2026, Hong Kong granted its first two stablecoin issuer licences, Japan put a trust-bank yen stablecoin into live issuance, Taiwan passed a dedicated virtual asset statute, and Singapore published the draft legislation that will write its stablecoin framework into law.

No other region has shipped this many named-issuer regimes in a single year.

And the pull behind that sprint is enormous: APAC's outbound cross-border payments hit $13.5 trillion in 2025, India and the Philippines remain two of the world's largest remittance recipients, and Asia already originates roughly 60% of the world's genuine stablecoin payment volume.

What makes APAC distinct is that regulated stablecoins are arriving as licensed financial infrastructure rather than as workarounds.

Today, we are thrilled to release Money Moves East: The Stablecoin Corridors in Asia in 2026, a comprehensive guide to the regulators, operators, and corridors turning APAC into the world's most licensed stablecoin economy.

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Insights from the Front Lines

This report isn't just data, it features exclusive perspectives from the operators building APAC's corridors:

"Licensing opens the door, but operations decide who walks through it." — Justin Wang, CEO, Capital Layer

"Reaching a payout location is easy to claim. Reaching it with regulated settlement on both ends is not. That distinction is the whole game." — Gustavo Ruiz, Chairman & CEO, Movantis

"The question isn't whether agentic payments end up on stablecoin rails, it's how quickly the tooling around identity, compliance, and control catches up." — Anna Chiu, Head of Agentic Payments, Reap

"Stablecoins in B2B are past the proof-of-concept stage. The next phase is not about creating more protocols, but making regulated digital money genuinely useful to businesses and recognised as part of mainstream financial infrastructure." — Arnoud Star Busmann, Advisor to STABO and former CEO of a MiCAR-regulated stablecoin issuer

"Businesses are increasingly choosing stablecoins where traditional cross-border payments create the most friction." — Eric Barbier, CEO, Triple-A

+many more insights from industry leaders

Inside the Report

Our team, alongside five operators that each own a distinct layer of APAC's stablecoin stack, has mapped the region corridor by corridor to show you where regulated money is actually moving.

What You'll Find in The Report:

The Regulatory Map: A side-by-side breakdown of Singapore's MAS framework, Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance, Japan's three-lane yen stack, and Taiwan's Virtual Asset Service Act, plus a watchlist on South Korea, Australia, and the UAE's new dirham stablecoins, and what "licensed" actually unlocks.
The Numbers That Matter: Why stablecoin volume ranges from $10 trillion to $390 billion depending on what you count, the $308 billion market cap decoupling from crypto cycles, and the corridor, adoption, and M&A data behind Asia's lead, including Payward's up-to-$600 million acquisition of Reap.
Who Is Building the Corridors: First-party data from Capital Layer on bank connectivity and trade settlement, Reap on stablecoin-funded corporate cards, Triple-A on merchant acceptance, STABO on enterprise treasury and collections, and Movantis on the hybrid fiat-plus-stablecoin remittance model.
Corridor Analysis: Intra-APAC (SG ↔ HK ↔ JP and TW ↔ JP ↔ KR), APAC–US, APAC–Middle East, and the high-volume remittance lanes from the US and Gulf into the Philippines, India, and Indonesia, with cost benchmarks against correspondent banking.
What Traditional Finance Needs to Know: Legacy rails versus stablecoin rails, what changes on the balance sheet, what doesn't, and practical entry points by jurisdiction.
Outlook 2026–2027: Which licences clear next, where multi-currency settlement consolidates, the regulatory arbitrage that closes, and the forward view on agentic payments and B2B automation.

Our Partners & Contributors

We are proud to be supported by the operators building APAC's regulated stablecoin infrastructure:

Capital Layer · Movantis · Reap · STABO · Triple-A

With additional contributions from AUDC and Green Link Digital Bank.

AUDC: Issuer of AUDD, Australia's regulated 1:1 Australian dollar stablecoin, live across eight blockchains under an ASIC-granted financial services licence.

Capital Layer: Asia's digital asset orchestration layer, coordinating stablecoin settlement, custody and compliance between the region's banks, enterprises and infrastructure providers.

Green Link Digital Bank: A Singapore-licensed digital wholesale bank bringing regulated banking rails and supply-chain finance expertise to stablecoin and tokenised settlement.

Movantis: Regulated financial infrastructure for cross-border value movement across the Americas and beyond, combining payments, remittances, FX, wallet infrastructure, card issuing, and stablecoin settlement through one integration. $63B+ in annual volume. Circle Payments Network member.

Reap: Hong Kong-based payments infrastructure that lets businesses spend, send and settle in stablecoins through cards and API-driven money movement.

STABO: A Hong Kong-licensed clearing layer that connects banking rails and stablecoin liquidity so businesses can accept, convert and settle fiat and stablecoins in one flow.

Triple-A: A global payment institution licensed across Singapore, Europe and the United States, enabling businesses to accept and make stablecoin payments with settlement in local currencies.