Today Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, announced the launch of a Treasury Token pilot with Ant International. The treasury and liquidity management solution runs on DBS’ permissioned blockchain, and essentially involves a multi-currency tokenized deposit offering for payments between bank branches.
Ant International is the parent of Alipay+, the international affiliate of China’s largest payment app. It has two goals for the pilot. One is to support Ant’s own intragroup global treasury management. That’s because the DBS solution enables 24/7 cross border payments. Additionally, Ant is developing its Whale platform offering, a global treasury management solution for clients that leverages blockchain and AI. DBS integrated its blockchain with Whale.
Large corporates have subsidiaries dotted around the world, and their treasury departments have to ensure that money is in the right place at the right time. Using smart contracts enables programmable payments that give treasury departments more granular control over payments. They also want to optimise the return earned on idle cash.
Solutions like DBS Treasury Token and JP Morgan’s JPM Coin allow enterprises to move money around within the bank instantly. With Ant’s Whale solution integrating with multiple such offerings, it supports inter bank payments. Ant recently announced plans for similar work with BNP Paribas. Plus, JP Morgan used Ant in a case study for JPM Coin programmable payments.
Kelvin Li, Head of Platform Tech at Ant said the pilot is targeting “reducing costs and transaction risks for cross-border payments. We have already seen successful use cases on our Whale platform in areas such as instant tax refund services and SME cross-border payments.”
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DBS and tokenized payments
DBS has integrated its blockchain with its core payment engine to support smart contracts for 24/7 programmable payments that settle atomically. The DBS permissioned blockchain is Ethereum compatible, which DBS says helps with interoperability with other projects DBS is involved with. One of them is Partior, the blockchain-based multi-currency payment system it launched with JP Morgan, Temasek and Standard Chartered.
“This new capability comes at a time when the treasury needs of businesses are evolving to meet the rise of e-commerce and on-demand services on a 24/7 basis,” said Lim Soon Chong, Group Head of Global Transaction Services, DBS Bank. “DBS’ permissioned blockchain also forms the building block for new efficiencies and capabilities in traditional banking services, such as programmable, fractionalised and atomic value transfer.”
In Singapore, DBS is also involved in tokenization projects such as Project Orchid for CBDC and Project Guardian. Ant participated in Project Guardian for its treasury management solution.
