MiCA-Licensed ZBX Adds Merchant Stablecoin Payments Through BoomFi

One of only four crypto-asset firms authorised under MiCA in Malta is moving into merchant payments. ZBX, the trading name of Zillion Bits Ltd, has partnered with infrastructure provider BoomFi to let businesses across the European Economic Area accept, hold and disburse stablecoin payments through a single regulated route. The service is scheduled to go live in late September 2026.

The deal extends ZBX beyond its existing trading and custody permissions into pay-in acceptance, treasury balances and outbound supplier payouts. For a firm supervised under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, the move is less about new technology than about widening the commercial surface of an already-scarce licence.

Why does a trading platform need a payments partner?

Building merchant payments in-house would have required ZBX to assemble wallet infrastructure, liquidity, transaction screening, Travel Rule compliance, settlement and banking arrangements, then maintain each component. BoomFi supplies those pieces as a modular stack that sits on top of ZBX's existing wallet provider, liquidity venues and banking rails rather than replacing them.

That distinction matters commercially. ZBX keeps the vendor relationships it has already paid for, and BoomFi operates as a technology and orchestration layer that fills the gaps. ZBX CEO Ian Dawson said the approach compressed what would have been a multi-year build into a matter of weeks, and that the firm's clients had been asking it to move beyond trading into payments. BoomFi CEO and co-founder Jack Tang framed the model as institutions keeping the systems they have invested in while acquiring a complete pay-in, store and pay-out product without a two-year engineering programme.

The regulatory perimeter stays with ZBX. BoomFi acts purely as a technology provider and does not itself offer MiCA-regulated crypto-asset services, a division that has become the standard structure for licensed firms buying in digital-asset capability.

What will the service actually offer merchants?

Eligible business clients will get four functions. Pay-in covers acceptance in major stablecoins and crypto-assets via payment links, hosted checkout or direct API integration. Store provides wallet infrastructure for merchant balances and treasury, with settlement in stablecoins or fiat. Pay-out supports outbound disbursements to suppliers and counterparties, subject to applicable regulatory requirements. Reconciliation feeds transactions back into merchants' existing accounting systems automatically.

The proposition targets the operational reality of stablecoin commerce rather than the speculative one. Businesses adopting these rails care less about token price than about whether proceeds reconcile cleanly and can be converted into payroll and supplier payments, which is precisely the workflow ZBX is packaging.

How scarce is ZBX's regulatory position?

ZBX is authorised by the Malta Financial Services Authority as a crypto-asset service provider under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, and separately as a payment institution whose permissions are limited to services relating to electronic money tokens. As of mid-2025, the MFSA's register listed only four CASPs authorised under MiCA: Bitpanda, Crypto.com, OKX and ZBX. That places a relatively small firm alongside three of Europe's largest exchanges.

The scarcity comes with scrutiny attached. In July 2025 the European Securities and Markets Authority published a peer review finding that the MFSA had only partially met expectations in one CASP authorisation and urged closer monitoring of Malta's fast-track licensing. The MFSA accepted the recommendations and said no Maltese MiCA licence was at risk of revocation. For businesses weighing where to route regulated stablecoin flows, the Maltese licensing debate is part of the due-diligence picture, and it is context the partnership announcement itself does not mention.

Where does this sit in the stablecoin payments market?

The timing tracks a broader shift from stablecoin issuance toward usable merchant infrastructure. Total on-chain stablecoin settlement reached roughly $33 trillion in 2025, a figure that surpassed the combined annual throughput of Visa and Mastercard, though it bundles substantial trading and treasury activity alongside genuine commerce. The more telling number for a merchant proposition is business-to-business flow, which climbed from under $100 million a month in early 2023 to more than $6 billion by mid-2025, according to market data compiled by industry trackers.

Adoption still tilts toward larger firms. Roughly half of US businesses with revenue above $500 million have integrated some crypto payment option, against about a third of small and midsize firms, the gap explained largely by the engineering and compliance resources bigger companies can commit. Turnkey, licence-backed products of the kind ZBX is launching are aimed squarely at closing that gap for firms without in-house capability. Even so, stablecoins remain close to 1% of global payment flows, a share that has barely moved despite the headline volume growth, which keeps the merchant opportunity firmly in the early-adoption phase.

BoomFi brings its own track record to that market. The company, founded by Jack Tang and Michael Si and based in London, raised a $3.8 million seed round in 2023 led by White Star Capital, with backing from Passion Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund and GSR, alongside angel investors drawn from MoonPay, Ramp and Revolut. Its group includes Plexa Finance Ltd, registered as a money services business with Canada's FINTRAC, and a UAE entity. BoomFi white-labels its stack to banks and payment service providers, positioning ZBX as one instance of a repeatable institutional playbook.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

For finance professionals, the ZBX deal is a clean illustration of how regulated firms are now buying digital-asset capability rather than building it. The scarce asset is not the technology, which is increasingly commoditised, but the MiCA authorisation that lets a firm offer these services legally across the EEA. Orchestration layers like BoomFi turn that licence into a broader product line in weeks, which changes the calculus for any institution sitting on a CASP permission and wondering whether to extend it into payments.

For investors, the signal is that stablecoin merchant infrastructure is maturing into a wholesale, white-label business, even as end-user payment adoption remains a fraction of card volumes and the regulatory footing in key hubs like Malta stays under active supervisory review.