Ant International has closed a Series A equity round of approximately $1.2 billion, with existing backers Ant Group and Alibaba Group joined by a group of undisclosed international institutional investors. The round follows weeks of reporting that pegged the target closer to $1 billion at a pre-money valuation near $10 billion, meaning the final raise came in above earlier expectations.

The Singapore-headquartered company was carved out of Ant Group as an independently operated business in 2024. It now connects more than 150 million merchants with over 2 billion user accounts globally, running the business through four units: Alipay+ for cross-border wallet interoperability, Antom for merchant payment acceptance, WorldFirst for cross-border trade payments, and Bettr for SME lending and treasury services.

N3XT, the blockchain-powered narrow bank targeting institutional B2B payments, has launched the N3XT Digital Dollar (NDD), a bank-issued tokenized deposit backed one-to-one by cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries. The announcement was made at Money 20/20 Asia in Bangkok.

The distinction N3XT draws — and leans on heavily — is that NDD is not a stablecoin. It is issued under a Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institution charter, making each unit a direct digital representation of a regulated bank deposit rather than a liability of a private issuer operating outside banking law. N3XT operates on a full-reserve model and does not lend, which removes the fractional-reserve risk that has historically complicated institutional adoption of deposit-like digital instruments. Reserve holdings are fully transparent and auditable.