Alchemy Pay used a keynote appearance at the Epicenter Crypto Conference in Lisbon to outline the growth of its crypto-fiat payments business and its broader ambitions in blockchain infrastructure. Speaking on behalf of the company, Chief of Staff Karmen Tang presented Alchemy Pay as a bridge between digital assets and traditional money, arguing that the industry still needs stronger real-world use cases to move beyond speculation and into everyday commerce.
The company emphasized that its leadership and founding team draw experience from major traditional payments firms including Mastercard, QFPay, PayPal, and Tencent. According to Tang, that background has given Alchemy Pay a practical edge in the crypto payments sector, where integration with existing financial rails remains one of the central challenges. Rather than positioning itself solely as a crypto-native service, Alchemy Pay is framing its value proposition around interoperability between blockchain systems and established payment infrastructure.
Network Growth and Market Footprint
One of the major themes of the presentation was scale. Alchemy Pay said it now operates in more than 60 countries and supports over 200 payment channels for both fiat and cryptocurrency acceptance. The company described this network as the backbone of a hybrid payment model designed to connect consumers, merchants, institutions, transaction service providers, and software developers.
Tang also highlighted the company’s partnership momentum over the previous year. Alchemy Pay said it gained access to PayPal payment channels in the fourth quarter of 2020 and later expanded into Visa and Mastercard payment channels earlier in 2021. Those developments were presented as milestones in the company’s attempt to make crypto spending and settlement function more smoothly within established payment ecosystems.
Beyond payment access, Alchemy Pay pointed to commercial and ecosystem partnerships with Shopify and Binance, signaling that its strategy is not limited to financial institutions alone. The firm appears to be pursuing a broad network approach that includes merchant enablement, crypto exchanges, and software-level integrations, all aimed at widening the pathways through which users and businesses can move between fiat and crypto.
ACH Token Visibility and Community Growth
The company also referenced growing market visibility for its native token, ACH. According to the presentation, ACH was listed on Coinbase during the summer, a move that Alchemy Pay said coincided with a 150-fold increase in value. The token is also supported by additional platforms including Gemini, Crypto.com, Poloniex, CoinOne, and Changelly.
In parallel, Alchemy Pay said its social media footprint has expanded materially, with more than 200,000 followers across Twitter, Telegram, and Reddit. While social reach does not directly translate into transaction volume or merchant adoption, the company treated that audience growth as an indicator of rising brand recognition and stronger engagement across both retail and industry communities.
Tang further disclosed that Alchemy Pay had recently established a joint venture with one of the largest conglomerates in the Middle East. The company did not reveal the partner’s identity, citing a non-disclosure agreement. Even without specifics, the mention suggests that Alchemy Pay sees the Middle East as an important region for payments expansion and enterprise-level partnerships.
Hybrid Payments and Merchant Economics
At the center of Alchemy Pay’s pitch is a hybrid payment architecture built to support crypto transactions in daily life, whether for small purchases or larger payments. The company argued that by bypassing costly interchange structures common in traditional card-based digital payments, merchants using its system can reduce costs significantly.
Specifically, Alchemy Pay said merchants could save 50% to 70% in fees compared with conventional digital payment methods. It also stated that merchant settlement occurs within two to three days. Those figures are central to the company’s value proposition, because merchant adoption in payments often depends less on ideology and more on transaction costs, integration simplicity, and settlement reliability.
In practice, Alchemy Pay is trying to solve a persistent issue in crypto commerce: the gap between consumer willingness to spend digital assets and merchant willingness to accept them. By handling the crypto-fiat conversion layer, the company is attempting to reduce complexity for businesses that want exposure to crypto-enabled demand without taking on the full operational burden of managing digital asset flows directly.
White-Label Products and Tokenized Loyalty
Alchemy Pay also used the presentation to discuss its white-label product suite. These offerings include crypto-linked cards and tools that allow businesses to issue their own loyalty tokens. The company said merchants can create virtual cards connected to Mastercard and Visa networks while also designing branded token rewards for users who spend within their ecosystems.
This part of the strategy reflects a wider trend in digital payments and blockchain infrastructure: the tokenization of user engagement. Instead of treating payments as a standalone function, Alchemy Pay appears to be positioning them as part of a broader consumer relationship stack that can include rewards, branding, and programmable incentives. For merchants and platforms, that could make crypto rails more attractive not simply as a payment option but as a customer retention mechanism.
Tang said the company sees significant potential in this area, especially in the way blockchain technology can support tokenized business models. The implication is that Alchemy Pay wants to serve not only as a processor, but also as an infrastructure provider for companies exploring customized fintech and Web3-style user experiences.
Building Through the Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance
Another important section of the keynote focused on ecosystem coordination. Tang argued that the crypto payments landscape remains fragmented and lacks sufficient interoperability. In response, Alchemy Pay joined other founding members including Polygon, NEAR, NEO, and Conflux to form the Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance (BIA).
According to the company, the alliance is intended to connect thought leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, incubators, and public blockchain ecosystems around shared research, development, and promotion efforts. The BIA plans to establish ecosystem funds with selected public blockchain members in order to incubate projects that advance cryptocurrency functionality and improve practical blockchain applications.
Alchemy Pay also said the alliance would work with more than thirty academics from leading universities worldwide to identify promising areas for development. That detail suggests the BIA is being framed not only as a marketing coalition, but as a collaborative platform for sourcing ideas, supporting early-stage builders, and accelerating infrastructure-level innovation across multiple blockchain environments.
A Broader Vision for Crypto-Fiat Convergence
The wider message from Alchemy Pay’s presentation was that crypto payments should not remain isolated from mainstream finance. Instead, the company is betting on convergence: a model in which digital assets, merchant systems, global payment channels, and blockchain-based incentive structures all become easier to use together.
Tang concluded with a vision of greater financial empowerment, inclusion, and transparency regardless of geography or social status. From Alchemy Pay’s perspective, that future will not arrive through speculation alone, but through practical systems that make crypto payments work seamlessly in the fiat economy.
As presented in Lisbon, Alchemy Pay’s strategy rests on several pillars at once: expanding geographic reach, integrating with established card and payment networks, building merchant tools, supporting branded token programs, and participating in multi-chain infrastructure alliances. Whether that combination will translate into long-term leadership remains to be seen, but the company is clearly positioning itself as a serious contender in the effort to connect blockchain-based value with everyday commercial activity.