Singapore-based fintech company Ant International has partnered with HSBC to launch a tokenised deposit service to enhance real-time treasury management in Hong Kong.
The service enables continuous HKD and USD payments between corporate wallets at HSBC Hong Kong, as the first bank-led blockchain-based settlement service in the region.
The collaboration follows a pilot on Ant International’s Whale platform, which implemented blockchain-based payments and tokenised deposits with various bank partners.
HSBC integrated insights from the pilot into the new tokenised deposit service, with Ant International as the top client.
Ant International has completed an intra-group fund transfer using the service, converting USD deposits into digital tokens on HSBC’s secure distributed ledger.
Ant International Platform Tech general manager Kelvin Li said: “We are very excited to work with an industry leader like HSBC, who shares the belief that tokenisation is the key to bridging the stability of traditional banking with the efficiency of blockchain, to enable real-time treasury management.
“As a tech connector in the fast-evolving financial services industry, our banking partnerships are expanding from tokenisation to AI-driven global FX and liquidity initiatives.
“We look forward to working with more public and private-sector partners to unlock more transparent, accessible and efficient treasury management solutions for businesses worldwide.”
The Whale platform, a product of Ant International’s Embedded Finance division, is a treasury management solution leveraging blockchain technology.
It enhances the efficiency and transparency of fund transfers among Ant International’s entities for real-time global treasury management.
Last year, Ant International processed more than one-third of its transactions on-chain through the Whale platform.
The Whale platform supports multiple tokenised assets from global banks and institutions, facilitating interoperability across blockchain networks.
It employs advanced technologies like homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to secure and verify transactions, ensuring confidentiality and cross-chain operations.
Ant International’s partnership with HSBC on tokenised deposits strengthens their collaboration, which began in 2020.
In October last year, the two companies conducted an HKD-denominated cross-bank experiment under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Ensemble Sandbox.
Recently, Ant International partnered with UK-based Barclays to enhance global treasury management using AI technology.
The collaboration aims to reduce foreign exchange (FX) costs and risks for businesses by integrating Ant International’s Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI FX Model.
