New digital capability provides customers with added protection in everyday online transactions
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 4 September 2026 – Citi today announced the upcoming launch of Hong Kong's first Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic Card Validation Code (CVC), in partnership with Mastercard. The new capability provides an additional layer of protection for online transactions and reinforces Citi's commitment to delivering innovative digital solutions that help protect customers against fraud in an increasingly digital world.
As digital commerce continues to evolve and become an increasingly important part of daily life, customers are seeking stronger protection against fraud, especially for card-not-present (CNP) transactions, without compromising convenience. The urgency of this need is underscored by the acceleration of digital payments. In 2025, Citi Hong Kong recorded over 20% year-on-year growth in the combined volume of domestic e-commerce and recurring transactions, with even higher growth for these transactions conducted in foreign currency. Globally, 40% of Mastercard transactions are now tokenized and contactless payments represent about 70% of all in-person purchase transactions on Mastercard-branded cards worldwide.
Citi's data shows that approximately 80% of credit card fraud attempts are related to CNP transactions, highlighting the importance of enhancing protection in online payment environments. Citi's Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC is designed to address this need by helping customers reduce the exposure of their physical card credentials across digital merchants, while continuing to support online shopping, subscriptions and recurring payments.
How It Works
Accessible through the Citi Mobile® App, the solution combines a Virtual Credit Card number with a Dynamic CVC that generates a one-time-use verification code for each new transaction. If a generated Dynamic CVC is not used within its validity period, it will automatically refresh when viewed in the Citi Mobile ® App.
The Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC leverages Mastercard's tokenization infrastructure, which underpins the security of millions of digital transactions globally. By generating a unique, time-limited code for every online transaction, the solution ensures that even if card details are compromised, they cannot be reused by fraudsters – dramatically reducing the risk of unauthorized transactions.
Complementing the Physical Card Experience
Beyond enhanced protection, the Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC is designed to complement the physical card experience. Customers can continue to use their physical cards for everyday in-person purchases, while the Virtual Credit Card can be used for online subscriptions, recurring payments, e-commerce transactions and mobile wallets.
This new feature gives customers greater control over their digital footprint, enabling them to compartmentalize their online spending and reduce risk exposure without any disruption to their existing card usage.
The upcoming launch forms part of Citi Hong Kong's ongoing investment in digital capabilities aimed at enhancing customer experience and providing more intuitive, secure and convenient banking solutions.
Sarah O, Head of Digital Growth & Cards and Unsecured Lending Sales, Citi Hong Kong, said, "At Citi, we are focused on delivering innovative solutions that help customers navigate an increasingly digital world with confidence. The upcoming launch of Hong Kong's first Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC reflects how we are leveraging digital innovation to make online payments safer, easier and more reassuring, helping customers transact with greater confidence and peace of mind. With the rapid growth of digital commerce and the persistent threat of card-not-present fraud, solutions like this are not just a differentiator – they are a necessity for responsible digital banking."
Helena Chen, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Hong Kong and Macau, Mastercard, said, "Mastercard is honored by the trust Citi has placed in us to bring this market-first innovation to their Hong Kong credit cardholders. The Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC leverages Mastercard's tokenization capabilities to safeguard cardholders' credentials, demonstrating how our security innovations are setting a new benchmark for consumer protection in digital commerce. This launch also reflects Mastercard's promise to deliver safe and secure payment experiences to every cardholder."
The Virtual Credit Card with Dynamic CVC will be made available to eligible Citi Mastercard credit card customers in Hong Kong in the coming months through the Citi Mobile® App.
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Photo: Helena Chen, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Hong Kong and Macau, Mastercard (left) and Sarah O, Head of Digital Growth & Cards and Unsecured Lending Sales, Citi Hong Kong (right)
Hashtag: #Citi
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About Citi
Citi is a preeminent banking partner for institutions with cross-border needs, a global leader in wealth management and a valued personal bank in its home market of the United States. Citi does business in more than 180 countries and jurisdictions, providing corporations, governments, investors, institutions and individuals with a broad range of financial products and services.
Additional information may be found atwww.citigroup.com | X: @Citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi
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Led by Blockchain Capital, the funding will accelerate the expansion of PhotonPay's stablecoin-centric Financial OS, connecting stablecoin liquidity with global fiat networks to unlock digital assets for everyday corporate operations and cross-border settlement.
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 29 October 2026 – PhotonPay today announced the closing of a $40 million Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from new investor SBI Group and follow-on investments from existing investors IDG Capital, GL Ventures, and Lightspeed Faction. Blacksheep Technology acted as exclusive financial advisor to PhotonPay on the transaction.
The new capital will support the expansion of PhotonPay's stablecoin-centric Financial Operating System (Financial OS), with investment focused on enhancing multi-asset wallet capabilities, expanding global card issuing, strengthening local clearing infrastructure in key markets, and developing an agent-ready financial execution layer.
As of August 2026, PhotonPay's annualized transaction volume reached US$65 billion. The company has secured 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and serves over 200,000 business customers across more than 200 countries and territories.
As stablecoins move beyond crypto-native use cases into corporate treasury, settlement and commercial spending, PhotonPay sees the next phase of global finance not as a choice between stablecoins and fiat currencies, but as the convergence of both. Its Financial OS connects on-chain liquidity with the banking, clearing and card networks businesses rely on for everyday operations.
"Moving money across borders in seconds means little if it still takes days to put that capital to work," said Lewison Chen, Founder and CEO of PhotonPay. "Stablecoins are accelerating global money movement, while local clearing and global card issuing connect that liquidity to local settlement and everyday business spending. Our Financial OS brings these capabilities together, making the underlying infrastructure far less visible to businesses, even as it becomes more essential than ever."
"At the same time, business software is becoming increasingly autonomous," Chen added. "AI is shifting financial workflows from people manually operating fragmented tools toward systems that understand business intent and coordinate execution across assets, accounts and financial rails. That creates the foundation for agentic commerce. Stablecoins change how money moves. AI changes how it gets put to work. But commerce is still what money is for."
Moving Money Across Assets and Markets
PhotonPay's Financial OS brings together multi-asset wallets, global money movement, foreign exchange, local clearing, and global card issuing through an integrated API-first architecture. This unified system gives businesses access to the financial capabilities they need to manage and deploy funds across markets.
Stablecoins sit at the core of this architecture. PhotonPay's multi-asset wallet connects stablecoin liquidity with fiat balances, integrating asset conversion, foreign exchange, and local clearing into a single connected workflow. This enables businesses to move funds across supported on-chain and traditional financial networks, turning digital asset liquidity into purchasing power for local payments and everyday corporate spending.
Supporting this dual-rail infrastructure is PhotonPay's established global financial network. Businesses can open local collection accounts in 17 key markets and receive funds in more than 60 currencies. On the payout side, the network supports over 100 payment routes across local clearing systems, bank transfers, and digital wallets, including payouts to 74 major local e-wallets. Approximately 97% of payout transactions reach recipients within hours or on the same day, with 68% arriving in real time.
Global card issuing extends these capabilities into programmable business spending. Through PhotonPay's APIs, businesses and platforms can issue virtual and physical cards, configure granular spending controls, and embed card payments directly into their software and automated workflows. Over the past 12 months, PhotonPay issued 4.4 million cards, up 275% YoY.
Beyond its first-party payment solutions, PhotonPay makes its infrastructure available through embedded finance, enabling technology platforms to natively integrate global accounts, payments, and card issuing into their own products. The company now serves more than 100 enterprise and platform partners, extending the reach of its Financial OS into industry-specific workflows.
From Financial Intent to Agentic Commerce
As AI agents assume active operational roles, financial infrastructure must evolve beyond API access to enable programmable, policy-governed execution. It requires systems capable of translating high-level instructions into coordinated financial actions, with deterministic controls governing how those actions are executed.
In May 2026, PhotonPay and Mastercard completed a live agentic payment demonstration using a tokenized PhotonPay card, validating AI-initiated transactions across existing global card networks.
Building on this milestone, PhotonPay is developing standardized financial interfaces designed for developers and AI agents. With planned support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), PhotonPay aims to make account information, balances, card functions, and payments accessible as composable financial primitives, allowing AI agents to securely retrieve context and initiate financial workflows within defined authorization boundaries.
To govern this agent-ready layer, PhotonPay is developing a policy-based execution framework designed to enforce programmable authorization rules, spending limits, and transaction-level controls. The framework is intended to enable AI agents to coordinate financial tasks across supported accounts and assets, while ensuring that execution remains subject to explicit, enforceable policies set by businesses.
PhotonPay is also advancing its AI-assisted risk review capabilities, designed to identify complex cases for human assessment. Together, these initiatives reflect a foundational principle of autonomous finance: AI may interpret intent and coordinate tasks, but financial execution must remain governed by verifiable authorization, deterministic controls, and auditable records.
"Connecting financial networks is only the beginning. The real breakthrough is abstracting that complexity behind a unified, programmable financial layer, so businesses and AI agents can move from intent to execution within clearly defined boundaries," said Chen.
Simple on the Surface, Deep by Design
The promise of a Financial OS is simplicity: enabling businesses to manage assets, route money, and execute payments through a unified financial operating layer. Yet delivering that simplicity requires deep financial infrastructure beneath the surface.
While stablecoins accelerate borderless value transfer, turning that liquidity into local settlement, supplier payments, and corporate spending still depends on established banking relationships, domestic clearing rails, foreign exchange infrastructure, and global card networks. Each market brings its own regulatory and operational requirements.
For PhotonPay, building a Financial OS means abstracting these fragmented global networks into a programmable, interconnected financial system. The objective is not to eliminate financial complexity, but to manage it within the underlying infrastructure, so businesses can operate without having to navigate these systems themselves.
"AI can simplify how businesses interact with financial services, but it cannot replace the infrastructure required to deliver them," said JP Pi, Chief Compliance Officer at PhotonPay. "Establishing local financial capabilities takes years of investment, institutional partnerships, and regulatory engagement. Software or AI models alone cannot replicate that depth. The simplicity businesses experience is the result of that heavy lifting, not a substitute for it."
PhotonPay has engineered a financial foundation spanning both stablecoin and fiat rails, connecting multi-asset conversion with local clearing networks. Institutional partnerships with J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, and DBS, alongside connections to domestic payment systems such as Brazil's Pix and Mexico's SPEI, form the backbone of this network.
The new capital will enable PhotonPay to strengthen its local clearing and compliance infrastructure in existing markets while expanding into new jurisdictions, scaling the reach of its Financial OS across corporate spending, embedded finance, and agentic commerce.
"Businesses want one provider that can handle their payments across currencies and markets, whether they're using bank transfers, stablecoins or cards. Lewison and his team have spent a decade building the banking relationships, licenses and local payment infrastructure to deliver that. We believe PhotonPay's ability to bring these capabilities together gives it a strong advantage as businesses adopt stablecoins for everyday payments." - BCAP，Yuanhan Li，Partner
"As stablecoins become increasingly integrated into global payment systems, bridging digital assets with traditional financial infrastructure will be essential to unlocking their real-world potential. PhotonPay's established global payment network and its vision for a stablecoin-centric Financial OS align closely with SBI Group's strategy to advance digital financial infrastructure and expand the practical adoption of digital assets. We look forward to supporting PhotonPay's continued growth and exploring opportunities for strategic collaboration across the SBI Group ecosystem." - Eiichiro So, CEO & Managing Director of SBI Ven Capital
Hashtag: #PhotonPay #SeriesC #Stablecoin
https://www.photonpay.com
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About PhotonPay
Founded in Hong Kong in 2015, PhotonPay is a global fintech company building a next-generation, stablecoin-centric Financial Operating System (Financial OS). Its API-first architecture brings together multi-asset wallets supporting stablecoins and fiat currencies, global money movement, foreign exchange, global card issuing, embedded finance, and local clearing infrastructure, connecting digital and traditional financial rails within an integrated financial system.
PhotonPay operates 16 offices worldwide, employs nearly 600 people, and holds 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The company serves businesses across more than 200 countries and territories.
For more information, visit www.photonpay.com.
** This press release is distributed by Media OutReach Newswire through automated distribution system, for which the client assumes full responsibility. **
PhotonPay Raises $40M Series C to Scale Its Stablecoin-Centric Financial OS
