Enabling Global Collection and Settlement with Stablecoin Payments

Client Overview

The client is a cross-border advertising platform serving global advertisers across gaming, utility apps, and e-commerce. The platform helps advertisers acquire users through Google, Meta, TikTok, and regional networks, while connecting with overseas media outlets, traffic partners, agencies, and KOLs, processing large volumes of daily cross-border ad budget top-ups and multi-party settlements.

Business Challenges

As the platform expanded its geographic coverage and advertiser base, fund management challenges emerged:

• Complex collection channels: Advertisers were distributed across multiple countries and settled using different payment methods and currencies. Traditional cross-border collection methods were costly and slow.

• Operationally intensive downstream settlement: Global media partners, channels, and agencies required settlement based on budget consumption, rebates, and revenue-sharing. Multi-currency, multi-channel reconciliation created operational overhead.

• Rapidly growing demand for stablecoin settlement: Many advertisers and partners were accustomed to settling in stablecoins like USDT and USDC, but the platform lacked a secure stablecoin collection and payout framework.

The platform required scalable fund infrastructure supporting the workflow from advertiser top-up, to platform fund aggregation, to downstream settlement, while reducing security risk, compliance exposure, and manual operational overhead.

Cobo’s Solution

• Dedicated stablecoin top-up channels for advertisers: Cobo provisions dedicated stablecoin channels for advertisers. Through Cobo’s Payments API, the platform generates unique deposit addresses for each advertiser or ad account, with one-to-one address-to-account mapping. Multiple blockchains and stablecoins are supported, allowing direct funding in USDT, USDC, and other stablecoins. Cobo monitors on-chain deposits real-time and writes back confirmed amounts, asset types, and account identifiers via webhooks, enabling automatic budget crediting without manual confirmation or reconciliation.

• Stablecoin payouts to media and partners: After advertising delivery, the platform calculates payables based on consumption and revenue-sharing rules. Using Cobo’s Payments API, the platform initiates batch payout instructions to recipients. Cobo executes on-chain transfers and returns settlement outcomes, allowing the platform to track status and transaction records of every settlement from a unified backend.

• Account and fee management for partner segmentation: Within Cobo's framework, the platform configures distinct accounts and hierarchies for advertisers, media partners, and agencies. Different fee rates and settlement rules are defined per partner, with automatic fee calculation and system-generated reconciliation reports. Combined with the platform's reporting, this enables granular management by client, channel, and region.

• Unified API integration with existing workflows: Cobo’s Payments API integrates with existing top-up, accounting, and settlement systems. From advertiser budget funding and balance updates, to payout instruction issuance, on-chain execution, and result callbacks, the process is automated end-to-end. Existing workflows remain unchanged, with stablecoins added as an additional payment option.

Results and Impact

• Smoother payment intake: The availability of direct stablecoin funding increased collection efficiency and success rates in regions with restricted payments or high remittance costs.

• Faster settlement and improved capital turnover: The platform can initiate daily, weekly, or monthly payout batches, enabling faster partner settlement and reduced cross-border delays. Capital turnover improved significantly.

• Stronger security and compliance posture: All stablecoin flows are screened using on-chain KYT and AML checks to identify high-risk addresses, sanctioned entities, and anomalous transaction patterns. Transactions triggering risk rules undergo predefined handling: flagging, delayed crediting, manual review, or policy-based refunds, reducing money laundering and sanctions exposure.

• Reduced operational and finance workload:  Collection, aggregation, settlement, and reconciliation are automated end-to-end. Teams are freed from manual reconciliation and transaction-by-transaction checks, focusing instead on campaign optimization and client service.

• All-inclusive on-chain cost model: To address the challenge of gas fees scaling linearly with transaction volume, Cobo’s Payments API uses an all-inclusive pricing model locking gas costs into a single fixed expense. This delivers more than 50% reduction in total on-chain payment costs for small, high-frequency advertiser payments.