Bakkt and Zoth team up to push stablecoin remittances into South Asia, Middle East and Africa
Bakkt and Singapore-based Zoth have forged a strategic partnership to roll out a compliant stablecoin payments infrastructure across high-volume remittance corridors linking the U.S. with South Asia, the Philippines, the Gulf, Nigeria and other African markets.
Under the arrangement, Zoth will operate as an Authorized Agent under the licensing umbrella of Bakkt Financial Solutions I, LLC, enabling it to leverage Bakkt’s U.S. regulatory approvals—including pan-U.S. money transmitter licenses, FinCEN MSB registration and a New York BitLicense—to offer enterprise payment flows into regulated markets. Zoth says this U.S.-licensed counterparty model addresses a common blocker for financial institutions and money transfer operators (MTOs) that have been reluctant to expand stablecoin settlement into regulated remittance corridors.
Why it matters
- Remittances are a high-volume, compliance-sensitive business. By combining Bakkt’s U.S. licensing stack with Zoth’s regional payments footprint and on-the-ground operations, the partners aim to move stablecoin pilots into production at scale across the Global South.
- The move comes weeks after Bakkt closed its acquisition of Distributed Technologies Research (DTR), an infrastructure firm focused on AI-native and “agentic” transaction systems. Bakkt has said DTR will help it build a 24/7 digital settlement network using stablecoin rails for institutional finance—capabilities that feed directly into this new partnership.
Scale and market focus
Zoth currently processes roughly $300 million in annualized payment volume and expects the partnership to help scale that toward $1 billion annually. The company also reports that more than $75 million worth of yield products have been sold through its platform to date.
Initial routes will concentrate on U.S.–South Asia flows, the Philippines, Nigeria and Gulf markets; Zoth specifically flagged the UAE-to-South Asia corridor as the largest remittance corridor in the Middle East. The firm lists active operations in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa and says it already maintains local banking relationships and payment infrastructure across the GCC, Southeast Asia and South Asia. Major MTOs in the Gulf are reportedly already using Zoth’s network via licensed local entities.
Execution and product set
Beyond settlement rails, Zoth’s product suite spans tokenized yield vaults, regulated treasury funds, cross-border payment orchestration tools and AI agent-enabled payment services. Strategic partners named by Zoth include Chainlink Labs, Olea Global Pte Ltd and Intellistake Technologies Corp.
A spokesperson for Zoth framed the tie-up as a template for turning pilots into production: by pairing Bakkt’s regulatory credentials with Zoth’s regional execution, the partnership seeks to deliver a compliant, credentialed solution that enterprise partners have been waiting for.
Competitive context
The alliance adds another institutional-grade stablecoin payments initiative to a broader wave of fintech and infrastructure efforts to build regulated stablecoin settlement systems for cross-border transfers. With Bakkt’s recent DTR integration and Zoth’s regional network, the two firms position themselves as competitors to other teams pursuing regulated, stablecoin-based remittance rails.
Bakkt first previewed the collaboration during its Investor Day on March 17, 2026, and the partnership now signals a more concrete push to operationalize stablecoin settlement in regulated global remittance corridors.
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