SmashPay has selected DFNS to run the onchain operating layer behind its stablecoin USD account, as it launches across Southeast Asia. SmashPay’s product is built on a simple idea: let people anywhere hold and move real US dollars, with stablecoins as the rail underneath and none of the complexity on top. For a product like that, the layer that holds balances, moves value across rails, and enforces the controls a regulated money business needs is not a back-office detail. It is the whole product underneath the app.
By choosing DFNS, SmashPay gets a full operating platform for that layer, accounts, transactions, treasury, and governance, rather than a custody tool it would have to build a business around.
SmashPay, building the USD account for globally-mobile professionals
SmashPay is a stablecoin account that lets people hold real US dollars from anywhere they live and work, with no US address or US incorporation required. It is built for the people the traditional system serves worst: freelancers, remote professionals, agencies, and distributed teams who earn in USD but live outside the United States, and who lose a painful share of every payment to their local bank. A local bank can charge up to 8% just to receive USD. SmashPay holds that USD at full value, so the user converts to local currency only when they choose, not by default, at an all-in conversion cost of 0.75 to 1.5%.
The experience is deliberately not crypto. Sign-up is by phone number. There are no seed phrases, no chains, and no jargon. Stablecoin is the payment rail underneath, the way ACH is the rail under a consumer payments app, and the user never has to touch a wallet directly. That design choice, hiding real onchain infrastructure behind a clean consumer experience, is what makes SmashPay accessible to people who would never use a crypto product.
It comes as one account with two products. For freelancers and remote professionals, the promise is simple: you earn USD, you keep all of it, and you convert on your own terms. For agencies and distributed teams, SmashPay turns the Friday-afternoon scramble of seven wires to seven countries into a single batch payout, sending USD directly to any bank account, stablecoin wallet, or card, and even splitting one payment across multiple recipients and rails in a single workflow.
Underpinning all of it is a serious approach to trust. SmashPay Inc. is a FinCEN-registered Money Services Business, holds USD value 1:1 in institutional-grade, fully-reserved custody, and has its reserves audited monthly. The company is launching across Southeast Asia first, with waitlists open in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, and a clear path to more markets across the region. It is exactly the kind of product whose success depends on the reliability, programmability, and security of the infrastructure beneath it.
How DFNS supports SmashPay
DFNS is a core banking platform for digital assets: the operating layer between an application’s business logic and the chains it runs on. For SmashPay, that means the building blocks of a USD stablecoin account are provided as one system, through one API, rather than assembled from separate pieces.
Accounts and wallets sit at the foundation. DFNS provides a wallet for every SmashPay user programmatically and invisibly, with no seed phrase and nothing for the user to manage, the infrastructure that makes phone-number sign-up and a no-crypto experience possible. On top of that account layer, DFNS provides the transaction processing behind SmashPay’s multi-rail sends and batch payouts, treasury tooling to manage balances and flows, and a policy and governance engine that enforces limits, approvals, and screening before anything moves, which matters for a registered money business operating across borders. Because DFNS supports stablecoins like USDC across the networks SmashPay uses, the same platform extends as SmashPay adds rails and markets.
Security is the floor underneath all of this. Private keys are protected through DFNS’ key infrastructure and never assembled in one place, so the accounts holding users’ USD rest on a foundation an attacker cannot move without defeating several independent systems at once. DFNS operates strictly as a technology provider, with a zero trust architecture and SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certifications.
By building on DFNS, SmashPay keeps its engineering focused on what makes it distinctive, the consumer experience, the conversion economics, and the payout workflows, on top of a proven platform for accounts, transaction processing, and governance, rather than building and maintaining onchain infrastructure of its own.
A practical foundation for stablecoin finance across Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is one of the most compelling regions in the world for what SmashPay is building. It has a large and fast-growing population of freelancers, remote workers, and distributed teams earning in dollars, strong demand to hold and move USD, and high costs baked into the traditional cross-border system. Stablecoins are increasingly the rail closing that gap, and the markets SmashPay is launching in, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, are among the most active for this kind of money movement.
DFNS is built to support SmashPay across those markets and the ones that follow. The platform gives SmashPay the account and transaction infrastructure to hold and move USD for users wherever they are, the governance and compliance controls to operate as a registered money business across multiple jurisdictions, and the scalability to grow from a launch waitlist to a large base of users and payouts without re-architecting. As SmashPay expands further across Asia, the same operating layer extends with it.
Together, SmashPay and DFNS bring real US dollars within reach of the globally-mobile professionals who have been underserved for too long: SmashPay through a product that makes holding and moving USD feel effortless, and DFNS through the platform that runs the financial operations underneath. As stablecoin rails continue to scale across Southeast Asia, it is a foundation built for production from day one.
Start building on DFNS today: app.dfns.io/get-started
Frequently asked questions
What is SmashPay? SmashPay is a stablecoin USD account that lets globally-mobile professionals hold and move real US dollars from anywhere, with no US address or US incorporation required. Sign-up is by phone number, with no seed phrases and no crypto experience — stablecoins are the payment rail underneath, the way ACH sits under a consumer payments app. It is launching across Southeast Asia first, with waitlists open in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Who provides the infrastructure behind SmashPay? DFNS provides the onchain operating layer behind SmashPay’s stablecoin USD account. DFNS is a core banking platform for digital assets: it supplies the accounts and wallets, transaction processing, treasury tooling, and policy and governance engine that SmashPay’s product runs on, through one API. DFNS is pure technology, not a custodian — it never holds client assets and never competes with its clients.
Is SmashPay safe? SmashPay Inc. is a FinCEN-registered Money Services Business, holds USD value 1:1 in institutional-grade, fully-reserved custody, and has its reserves audited monthly. The accounts rest on DFNS’ key infrastructure, where private keys are never assembled in one place, so an attacker would have to defeat several independent systems at once. DFNS operates with a zero trust architecture and is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certified.
How much does SmashPay cost compared with a local bank? A local bank can charge up to 8% just to receive USD. SmashPay holds USD at full value and lets the user convert to local currency only when they choose, at an all-in conversion cost of 0.75% to 1.5%.
Which stablecoins and networks does SmashPay use? SmashPay settles on stablecoins such as USDC. Because DFNS supports stablecoins across the networks SmashPay uses, the same platform extends as SmashPay adds rails and markets across Southeast Asia and beyond.