Animoca Brands backs AllScale's self-custody stablecoin push

Animoca Brands has made an undisclosed strategic investment in AllScale, a startup building what it calls the first self-custody stablecoin neobank. Both companies describe the goal as autonomous agentic payments – letting AI agents initiate and settle transactions without a human clicking confirm.

AllScale builds non-custodial tools around stablecoin payment rails. The company offers invoicing and payroll systems for USDC and USDT, designed so users never surrender custody of their funds. Its target audience covers microbusinesses, freelancers, DAOs, and Web3 projects that need to pay and get paid without traditional banking infrastructure. AllScale 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 round led by YZi Labs, with participation from Informed Ventures and the Aptos Foundation. The Animoca investment represents the next phase: scaling distribution and layering on AI-driven payment capabilities.

Animoca Brands is one of crypto's most prolific investors, with a portfolio that covers gaming and metaverse projects as well as digital asset infrastructure. It recently announced a funding program specifically targeting developers building AI agent platforms. That overlap is strategic. For agentic payments to work at scale, you need payment infrastructure that is both programmable and non-custodial. An AI agent cannot walk into a bank and open a checking account. It can hold keys to a smart contract wallet and interact with on-chain payment rails. That is exactly what AllScale is building.

AllScale's self-custody model sets it apart. Most stablecoin payment platforms today operate on a custodial basis – 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.

Major crypto investment firms are deploying capital into stablecoin infrastructure even when deal terms are not publicly disclosed. Animoca's involvement also brings distribution advantages that a $5M seed-stage company could not 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.

Execution remains the central question for early-stage infrastructure plays. 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.