Alchemy Pay and HTF Securities Gain SFC Approval to Offer Regulated Virtual Asset Advisory Services

Alchemy Pay and HTF Securities have taken a decisive step to deepen their regulated footprint in Hong Kong’s digital-asset market, announcing that HTF’s Type 4 (Advising on Securities) licence has been formally uplifted to cover virtual asset advisory services. Alchemy Pay said the upgrade, delivered in collaboration with HTF Securities Limited and under the oversight of the Securities and Futures Commission, authorizes the licensed firm to offer regulated virtual-asset advice to both institutional and retail clients in Hong Kong.

The licence change follows Alchemy Pay’s earlier strategic investment in the licensed broker and marks the first phase of a broader plan to expand permitted activities to include virtual asset dealing and asset management under Types 1 and 9. Company spokespeople framed the move as part of a stepwise regulatory strategy that mirrors a path already taken by other industry players in the city.

Market watchers say the approach, securing advisory permissions first, then seeking dealing and management authorizations, is becoming a common route for crypto firms that want to operate within Hong Kong’s tightened but clearer regulatory framework. The strategy has precedent: leading local crypto groups have taken similar routes to add virtual-asset services to existing SFC licences, a pattern Alchemy Pay’s team explicitly referenced as it expands its on-shore presence.

For Alchemy Pay, the license upgrade is both a regulatory milestone and a practical enabler for its product roadmap in Asia. The firm has described the authorization as complementary to its work on stablecoin infrastructure, fiat-crypto rails and the Alchemy Chain project, initiatives that aim to bridge traditional payments and crypto rails while keeping compliance central. The company also pointed to recent regulatory wins overseas as evidence of its compliance-first push.

Compliant Crypto Services

That compliance push has been visible across several jurisdictions. Alchemy Pay says it has steadily grown its U.S. licensing footprint and, in 2025, secured multiple state money-transmitter licenses as part of a broader effort to make fiat-to-crypto flows more widely available and regulated. Observers view the Hong Kong upgrade as the Asia-facing counterpart to that U.S. strategy.

Industry participants said the move will make it easier for institutional and retail clients in the city to access regulated advisory services on tokens and other virtual assets, while giving Alchemy Pay and HTF a stronger base from which to pursue the next phases of their regulatory programme. The companies said they will now concentrate on applying for the wider permissions that would allow them to offer dealing and asset-management services tied to virtual assets, a development that, if approved, would further position the group at the intersection of traditional finance and the emerging digital-asset economy.

Founded in 2017, Alchemy Pay has positioned itself as a payments gateway linking crypto and fiat for merchants, developers and consumers, with products that range from on- and off-ramps and multi-fiat Web3 banking to NFT checkout and tokenized real-world-asset platforms. The company said the HTF licence uplift is an important building block for delivering those services under a regulated framework in one of Asia’s most important financial centres.

Regulators around the world continue to define the boundaries for virtual-asset activity, and the Alchemy Pay–HTF development underscores how established licensing routes and local partnerships remain central to firms that want to scale crypto services without running afoul of rules. For clients and competitors alike, the case will be watched closely as the firms pursue the next stages of their Hong Kong regulatory roadmap.