Capital Bets on "Super Individual" Banks: How is AllScale Seeking New Territories in the Shadow of Payment Giants?

A joint investment from Silicon Valley and China has been made, targeting a long-overlooked group in the global payments landscape. Startup AllScale announced the completion of a $5 million seed round led by YZi Labs and GSR Ventures. Its goal is ambitious yet precise: to build a self-custodial digital bank for the “super individuals” emerging from the global AI wave. With annual on-chain stablecoin transaction volume soaring to $46 trillion—surpassing Visa—this is more than just a financing event; it’s a flanking declaration against the arrogance of traditional financial systems.

Identifying the “fault line”: the contradiction between globalized productivity and localized payments The story begins with an increasingly acute global contradiction. AI technology is atomizing productivity at an unprecedented pace—a developer in Nairobi can write code for a Silicon Valley company, and a designer in Southeast Asia can serve a European brand. These people are the most active “capillaries” in the new wave of globalization, forming a fast-growing “super individual” army with annual growth rates exceeding 60%. However, the payment systems that carry value flows remain stuck in the old era—cumbersome, expensive, and riddled with bias. When value creation knows no borders, but getting paid is fraught with barriers, a huge commercial fault line emerges.

AllScale’s solution: self-custodial global payment routing AllScale’s proposed solution is to become a “self-custodial stablecoin digital bank.” Its core business logic penetrates four key scenarios: solving global batch payroll for distributed Web3 teams; providing overseas merchants with more autonomous, lower-friction payment channels than Stripe and other giants; bridging the “last mile” for freelancers in emerging markets without bank accounts; and offering seamless payment tools for individuals conducting “Biolink economy” transactions on social platforms like Telegram. Using stablecoins as the bloodstream, it seeks to connect the islands isolated by the high walls of traditional finance.

Product philosophy: walking a tightrope between ultimate security and seamless experience AllScale faces the challenge of reconciling a core paradox in crypto: self-custody means security and autonomy, but often comes with poor user experience (like mnemonic phrases). To address this, it made a key “subtraction”: replacing mnemonics entirely with Passkey (fingerprint/face ID), making private key management as natural as logging in to a social app. At the same time, it performed a precise “addition”: building a dual-layer “on-chain funds + off-chain services” architecture—fund flows are transparent and immutable, while off-chain SaaS services like invoice generation and client management are offered, and it innovatively pays gas fees on behalf of users, making blockchain technology invisible to them.

Triple waves of the era: AllScale at a historical crossroads This startup’s emergence is no coincidence, but the result of three converging trends. The first is the mainstreaming of stablecoins, whose on-chain settlement volumes are now challenging Visa and being actively adopted by giants like PayPal and Stripe. The second is the rise of the “PayFi” (Payment Finance) narrative: payments are no longer just an endpoint but the starting point for programmable financial services. The third, and most fundamental, is the explosion of “super individuals” driven by the AI economy, who need financial infrastructure to match their globalized, fragmented work modes. AllScale is precisely positioned at this intersection.

Team and capital: a calculated bet on “compliance” and “expansion” Investors’ willingness to bet relies on trust in the team. AllScale’s founding team brings rare, multifaceted backgrounds: compliance veterans from Square (TBD project) and Kraken ensure compliance is deeply embedded from day one; tech and product experts from AWS and TikTok are responsible for bank-grade security and consumer-grade experience. The combination of lead investors YZi Labs, GSR Ventures, and follow-on investor Minyin International signals market recognition of AllScale’s ability to understand both crypto-native rules and connect with traditional financial resources. It’s a bet on whether the team can navigate regulatory fog with precision.

Ecosystem building and strategic positioning: growing in the giants’ gaps Facing payment giants like Stripe and Airwallex, as well as native wallets like MetaMask, AllScale has chosen a differentiated path. By becoming BNB Chain’s official partner and integrating on/off-ramp providers like MoonPay, it is quickly building a closed-loop payment ecosystem. Its strategic positioning is clear: lighter and more open (due to self-custody) than traditional FinTech, more user-friendly and accessible (due to seamless experience) than native crypto wallets. Rather than directly challenging the giants, it focuses on serving the “middle 98%” of lightweight operators that the giants overlook.

Vision and risks: the long journey to bridge the gap AllScale’s ultimate vision is to become the infrastructure for free global value flow in the AI era. Whether the story holds up will ultimately depend on whether young people in Africa and Southeast Asia actually use it to receive their first global paychecks. The road ahead is far from smooth: global stablecoin regulation remains unclear, and balancing decentralization ideals with compliance demands will be a long-term challenge; user education and acquisition in emerging markets is costly; and it must build strong ecosystem and user habits before the payment giants awaken and pivot.

Business insight: a paradigm shift from “empowering institutions” to “empowering individuals” AllScale’s case reveals a deeper business paradigm shift: fintech innovation is gradually moving from “how to better serve banks and large enterprises” (To B) to “how to directly empower every individual who creates value” (To C). As productivity is democratized by AI, the financial tools serving it must also be democratized. This is no longer just an efficiency race, but a profound transformation in economic sovereignty and financial inclusion.

In 2025, the $46 trillion stablecoin flood and the AI-remade global labor market have together carved out a new continent. AllScale’s story is about how capital, technology, and product attempt to build the first bridge to this new land. Its success or failure will test a core proposition: between technological idealism and complex reality, can we truly build a digital wallet for the next billion users—one that they own and that connects them globally? The answer will be decided by every “super individual” around the world, voting with their fingertips.