TAIPEI, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — XREX Group, a blockchain-enabled financial institution, has won the Regulatory Excellence Award at the inaugural AFA Awards. Selected from 88 corporate nominations across Asia-Pacific, XREX Group was among the five companies honored across five award categories, with a single winner selected for each category.
The award recognizes XREX Group’s sustained commitment to building secure and compliant financial infrastructure, backed by continued investment in regulated operations in both Taiwan and Singapore. It also recognizes the Group’s three-pronged business strategy spanning virtual asset exchange, cross-border payments, and RegTech, combining financial innovation with stronger fraud prevention and anti-money laundering capabilities. Together, these efforts demonstrate XREX Group’s ability to scale across multiple financial rails while upholding high standards of regulatory compliance, security, and trust.
Founded by the Asia FinTech Alliance (AFA), the AFA Awards accept nominations by invitation only. Nominations are made exclusively by AFA’s member FinTech associations—leading and representative organizations within their respective Asian economies. With members spanning 16 Asian economies, each association is eligible to nominate up to seven companies.
Each nomination represents a company that has already earned recognition through a market-level selection process in its home economy. From the 88 nominations, the field was narrowed to 30 companies and then 10 finalists through two rigorous rounds of evaluation. At the final round and awards ceremony in Taipei on 1 September, seven international judges came together in person to evaluate the finalists’ live presentations and conduct face-to-face Q&A sessions before selecting one winner in each of the five award categories.
Combating Financial Crime Is an Industry-Wide Cost
In his final pitch at the AFA Awards, Wayne Huang, XREX Co-founder and Group CEO, put it plainly: “Fraud, scams and money laundering is a cost our entire industry bears.” He stressed that no single financial institution can tackle these challenges alone, as the risks and costs of financial crime are ultimately borne by the financial industry as a whole.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), in its Global State of Scams 2025 report, estimated scam losses of USD 442 billion over the preceding year across the 42 markets surveyed. The scale of the challenge is also clear in blockchain finance: TRM Labs reported that approximately USD 35 billion in cryptocurrencies flowed to fraud schemes in 2025.
XREX Singapore operates XREX Pay under a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license and provides stablecoin-based B2B cross-border payment services. XREX Taiwan operates XREX Exchange and is a virtual asset service provider (VASP) that has completed anti-money laundering (AML) registration with Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC). For XREX Group, a financial institution operating across virtual asset markets and cross-border payments, these figures are not abstract industry statistics—they represent real risks that must be actively identified, monitored, and managed every day.
For Huang, the challenge was not simply to manage these risks individually, but to find ways to lower the collective cost across the industry. That thinking led XREX Group to develop XRAY, its anti-fraud tool for querying blockchain wallet addresses.
XRAY provides free wallet risk screening. Its primary users include traditional financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, and VASPs. Within one second, users can look up the platform associated with a blockchain wallet address, its risk information and on-chain labels, and the types and amounts of assets it holds. They can then trace fund flows and conduct further investigations. XRAY has recently integrated AI tools to help users understand complex blockchain fund flows more quickly.
XRAY supports financial institutions’ day-to-day risk management and transaction monitoring, law enforcement investigations, and public-private efforts to combat financial crime. Through on-chain data analysis, risk identification, and AI, it helps organizations trace funds and prevent financial crime more efficiently.
The Cost of Public Trust is the Biggest Cost
In his AFA Awards presentation, Huang identified three categories of costs associated with scam and money laundering risks: the cost of technology and compliance, as financial institutions continuously invest in monitoring, risk management, AML systems, and compliance personnel; the cost of customer satisfaction, as additional checks can introduce friction into legitimate transactions; and the cost of public trust—the biggest cost, as repeated incidents of financial crime can undermine confidence in individual institutions and the broader financial industry.
Scams, money laundering, and blockchain-based finance all cross borders. Cooperation across industries, countries, and regions is therefore essential to reducing shared costs and strengthening public trust. XREX Group is grateful for the international judges’ recognition through the Regulatory Excellence Award and looks forward to building stronger connections across AFA’s network of 16 Asian economies.
As stablecoins and blockchain become more widely used in cross-border payments and fund transfers, establishing consistent, effective capabilities for risk identification and fund tracing across markets will be critical to the industry’s continued development.
One Award, 16 Economies, Infinite Possibilities
At the AFA Awards ceremony, Jaclyn Tsai, Chairwoman of AFA and Honorary Chairwoman of the Taiwan FinTech Association, summed up the awards’ purpose: “One Award, 16 Economies, Infinite Possibilities.” She said Asia’s FinTech sector needs bridges for collaboration that can scale across markets, rather than more isolated innovations.
Tsai said the awards celebrate companies that have demonstrated cross-border impact and the ability to scale their solutions across markets. Winning means more than receiving a trophy; it connects companies to AFA’s cross-border collaboration network.
Wilson Beh, Vice Chairman of AFA, also announced at the ceremony that all Top 30 companies would automatically receive AFA Affiliate Membership. AFA will help connect these companies with local associations, sources of capital, industry partners, market resources, and ecosystems, based on their target markets, regulatory and licensing needs, and strategic partnership priorities.
About XREX Group
XREX Group is a blockchain-enabled financial institution working with banks, regulators, and users to redefine banking together. We provide services to businesses in or dealing with emerging markets, and novice-friendly financial services to individuals worldwide.
Founded in 2018, XREX Group offers a full suite of services such as digital asset custody, wallet, cross-border payment, fiat-crypto conversion, cryptocurrency exchange, and fiat currency on-off ramps.
Sharing the social responsibility of financial inclusion, XREX leverages blockchain technologies to further financial participation, access, and education.
XREX Singapore operates under the Major Payment Institution (MPI) license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). XREX Taiwan is a regulated VASP that completed its Compliance Declaration on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) with Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) in March 2022. It passed its AML registration with the FSC in September 2025, becoming one of ten approved VASPs.
CONTACT:
Yoyo Yu
yoyoyu@xrex.io
+886-916386208
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SOURCE XREX Group
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