Standard Chartered has announced the rollout of a tokenized deposit solution enabling clients to move money from traditional bank ledgers onto blockchain infrastructure.
Coming after the successful completion of its pilot SGD-denominated liquidity transfers for Ant International, the bank now launched a tokenized SGD and USD account balances solution for the company on its blockchain-based real-time global treasury management platform, the Whale platform.
24/7 treasury management
The current use case follows the learnings from the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Guardian initiative, focusing on improving liquidity and efficiency of financial markets through tokenization. The new solution was co-developed in collaboration with Ant International, which has been Standard Chartered’s partner in tokenization initiatives on the blockchain. Through the solution, Ant International is set to be able to prepare its treasury for the future and move on to real-time 24/7 movement of value in SGD and USD.
Furthermore, the launch represents the latest initiative in Standard Chartered’s tokenization strategy, centring on setting the standard for commercial banks to provide movement of funds from the traditional commercial bank ledger to the blockchain. Additionally, it underlines how companies can benefit from the inherent immutability and efficiency of distributed ledger technology.
The tokenized deposit solution is set to allow effective intra-group deployment of liquidity for Ant International and its entities. Also, integrating Ant International’s bank accounts held with the bank with tokenized deposits will offer a simplified and near real-time flow of liquidity between the several entities and will lead to improvements in the management of the company’s treasury and working capital.
Standard Chartered’s solution delivers capabilities for transactions in SGD and USD in Singapore, as well as HKD, CNH, and USD in Hong Kong. This optimises how users in different markets transact and settle with the currencies they are already familiar with and work with. This workflow can bring benefits to global companies that transact across borders and require instant and 24/7 liquidity management.
