HONG KONG, Feb. 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — During Consensus Hong Kong 2026, the “Institutional Payment & On-Chain Financial Infrastructure Summit,” co-hosted by enterprise blockchain infrastructure and fintech service provider Cregis alongside Stable, Jsquare, and FutureCloud, was successfully held on February 9th afternoon at the Conrad Hong Kong. This closed-door summit brought together industry leaders from Conflux, SlowMist, Hex Trust, Tevau, Interlace, AWS, BlockOffice, Cynopsis, and Vesta Capital for in-depth discussions on core topics including stablecoins, institutional payments, on-chain financial infrastructure, security, and compliance.
From Exploration to Expansion: Entering the Era of Scale
With stablecoin market capitalization surpassing the $100 billion milestone, on-chain payments are transitioning from early adoption to mainstream financial systems. In his opening remarks, Cregis CTO Aaron Zhang emphasized: “We stand at a critical historical juncture: on-chain financial infrastructure is no longer a question of ‘whether it’s feasible’ from a technical perspective, but rather ‘how to scale’ from an engineering and governance standpoint. Today’s discussions will directly influence the evolution of the global financial system.”
Aaron reflected on how the early market was only familiar with personal wallets like MetaMask, struggling to understand the value proposition of “enterprise wallets.” He noted that for cryptocurrency to truly integrate into the business world and become a stable, circulating “currency,” enterprises must be able to securely and compliantly manage and utilize digital assets, a fundamentally different challenge from personal asset management.
Based on this understanding, Cregis has built a three-tier technical architecture system anchored by security, compliance, and easy integration:
- A Security Foundation: Employing advanced technologies like MPC and HSM, functioning as a “vault” to safeguard private key security.
- A Compliance-Enabled Workspace: Through proprietary infrastructure like DIG, achieving traceable and auditable key access while integrating risk analysis and control.
- A Business Platform: Providing flexible workflows, multi-chain support, and blockchain risk management, seamlessly integrating with enterprise systems like payment engines, ERP, and OA to enable multi-scenario business applications, including asset management, cross-border payments, and trading.
Aaron emphasized that this robust infrastructure enables clients to securely access global digital assets through a single platform, the foundation that has allowed Cregis to steadily expand to over 50 countries, serve nearly 3,500 enterprise clients, and maintain a zero-incident security record.
Looking ahead, Cregis’s strategy extends beyond “enterprise wallets” toward a grander vision: promoting the global adoption and application of stablecoins. The company has begun deploying custody services and actively pursuing VASP and related licenses, aiming to provide bank-like SaaS custody services for enterprises. The longer-term goal is to build a blockchain settlement system connecting various banks and replacing traditional clearing networks, potentially revolutionizing card payment networks to ultimately achieve “allowing enterprises to focus solely on business without worrying about asset management technical details, freely using globally circulating stable currencies issued by enterprises.”
Aaron stated that Cregis’s mission is to continuously build critical infrastructure and collaborate with partners to drive crypto economy integration into real-world commercial society, achieving large-scale adoption.
Stablecoins: From Payment Tools to Financial Foundation
The first panel discussion, “Payments & Stablecoins as Financial Infrastructure,” was moderated by Jsquare Investment Analyst Noah Frankel, featuring Stable CEO Brian Mehler, Tevau Co-founder Andy Liu, and Conflux Network Hong Kong Head Esther Jiang.
Brian Mehler shared Stable’s observations on institutional adoption: the “last mile” problem for stablecoins in cross-border payments remains prominent, especially in emerging markets where local currency on-chain liquidity is insufficient and fees are prohibitively high. Fee predictability is crucial for institutions. Last week’s network congestion caused gas fees to spike 30-40%, making it difficult for CFOs to plan costs. Stable is building a Layer 1 payment network denominated in USDT, eliminating gas token volatility by allowing users to pay fees in the transferred currency itself, improving experience and certainty.
Andy Liu highlighted that one of the biggest obstacles facing stablecoins is the lack of regulatory licenses. For instance, in Hong Kong, USDT has not yet become a legal payment instrument, which actually creates market opportunities for card issuance and payment gateways. Over the next five years, emerging markets will launch locally compliant stablecoins, forming a parallel structure of “global stablecoins + local compliant stablecoins.” Meanwhile, more SMEs are using stablecoins for high-frequency turnover payments because they offer high-liquidity yield products with 24-hour lock-up periods, superior to traditional banks’ 7-day fixed deposits.
Esther Jiang emphasized Conflux’s role as a compliance-oriented Layer 1, supporting not only mainstream USD stablecoins but also actively integrating long-tail stablecoins like KRW, JPY, and offshore RMB to meet diverse cross-border settlement scenarios. Stablecoins should not merely be speculative or savings tools, but rather serve as settlement infrastructure supporting real trade exchanges like the “Belt and Road” initiative. Additionally, the CFTC’s recent guidance on stablecoins is a significant signal, and it marks stablecoins’ transformation from “crypto assets” to “regulated financial instruments,” potentially allowing banks to become issuing nodes and completely changing the game.
Building a Trustworthy On-Chain Financial System
The second panel, “Security & Compliance in On-Chain Financial Systems,” moderated by Vesta Capital Founder & CEO Rony Dahan, focused on the most critical safeguard systems in institutional deployment. SlowMist CTO Blue Yang, Hex Trust Chief Product Officer Giorgia Pellizzari, BlockOffice CFO Christian Corrigan, and Cynopsis Co-founder & CEO Chionh Chye Kit shared insights from their respective domains.
Blue Yang pointed out that most institutional security incidents don’t stem from sophisticated technical attacks, but rather from operational errors, improper permission configurations, poor key management, or human mistakes. At the DeFi protocol level, there’s currently a lack of effective real-time risk prediction and AML interception systems, allowing hackers to quickly transfer assets through cross-chain bridges, making freezing difficult. He proposed that the future may require oracle systems integrating AML/CFT risk controls to achieve pre-transaction risk prediction and interception. Additionally, the industry urgently needs established security standards and certification systems through collaboration between project parties, audit firms, and regulatory bodies to provide clear compliance guidance.
Giorgia Pellizzari noted fundamental contradictions between traditional fiat and cryptocurrency operational frameworks: the former emphasizes identity verification and transaction reversibility, while the latter is based on anonymity and technical irreversibility. The core pain point in current compliance building is mechanically applying traditional finance requirements like “travel rules” to the crypto world, creating cumbersome and inefficient processes (such as requiring users to “screenshot proof of wallet ownership”). She emphasized that the industry truly lacks native standards for Web3 characteristics, such as cross-chain interoperability and secure interaction protocols for institutional DeFi. These standards require joint development by private sector and policymakers, but technical iteration speed far exceeds standard formation cycles, creating significant implementation challenges.
Christian Corrigan advised that even startups must adopt multi-sig, MPC, or professional custody services for fund management, eliminating single-person control. On compliance, he sharply criticized certain current rules (like proving wallet ownership) as “quite stupid” operationally and easily circumvented. He believes Web3’s ideals (permissionless, trustless) have evolved in reality toward necessary regulation and mature infrastructure, with good compliance and security practices serving not as constraints but as foundations for mainstream adoption and user protection.
Chionh Chye Kit stated that the future will be a world of deep integration between Web2 and Web3 services, requiring forward-looking compliance that doesn’t choose single tracks in black-and-white terms. He systematically outlined that institutions need comprehensive compliance systems spanning three vertical domains: information security (like ISO 27001), data privacy, and AI governance. Obtaining and maintaining these international certifications is time-consuming and costly, yet crucial for building trust. He also cautioned the industry that while calling for standards, we must guard against creating another burdensome and inefficient compliance load like “travel rules.”
Evolution Path of Enterprise Digital Asset Infrastructure
In the keynote session, Interlace Strategy & Operations Head Henry Chan noted that current global stablecoin penetration in real payments is only about 1%, but the market size could grow from $35 trillion to $200 trillion over the next four years. Primary growth will come from real-scenario payments, representing substantial expansion potential. Interlace provides card issuance, bank accounts, QR codes, wallet-as-a-service, fund management, and acquiring capabilities through a one-stop platform, serving 7,000 enterprise clients globally and obtaining key licenses in Europe, Dubai, and other regions to establish foundations for global expansion.
AWS Head of Solutions Architect (Web3) Kong Lei shared insights on how AWS empowers secure, highly available digital financial infrastructure. He presented AWS’s reference architecture for stablecoins, analyzed cross-chain implementation cases of USDC on AWS, and demonstrated how AWS Gen AI solutions can be leveraged to build intelligent digital financial services for enterprises.
Industry Consensus: Secure, Efficient, and Compliant Infrastructure Development
The summit reached several industry consensuses: stablecoins’ ultimate form will be a hybrid system of “globally universal stablecoins + locally compliant stablecoins,” gradually integrating with traditional payment networks (like SWIFT); institutional infrastructure needs unified industry standards and data specifications to reduce integration costs; regular dialogue mechanisms between regulatory bodies, industry associations, and technology providers must be established; compliance should not be an afterthought feature but a first principle in architectural design; security’s core lies in systems and processes, not purely relying on technology.
Cregis Co-founder Aaron Zhang concluded: “Today’s discussions validate our judgment: the industry is shifting from ‘why do we need on-chain financial infrastructure’ to ‘how to build it better.’ Cregis will continue collaborating with ecosystem partners to advance interoperable, compliance-first, institution-ready infrastructure development.”
This summit was co-hosted by Cregis, Stable, Jsquare, and FutureCloud, with strong support from Interlace, DR, AWS, and other institutions. Attendees unanimously agreed that as regulatory frameworks gradually clarify, technical architectures mature, and institutional adoption accelerates, on-chain financial infrastructure is experiencing historic development opportunities and will profoundly reshape global capital flow and commercial settlement paradigms.
About Cregis
Cregis is a global provider of enterprise-grade digital asset infrastructure, delivering secure, scalable, and compliant solutions for institutional clients.
Its core offerings—MPC-based self-custody wallets, Wallet-as-a-Service, and a robust Payment Engine—help exchanges, fintech platforms, and Web3 businesses manage digital assets with confidence.
With over 3,500 businesses served globally, Cregis empowers businesses to accelerate their Web3 transformation and unlock new digital asset opportunities.
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Janice Tang
Cregis Technology LTD
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1081931a-12fa-4fc8-b6aa-6d4fd700197e
