Standard Chartered’s Tokenized Deposit Solution Goes Live with Ant International as First Client

Forget waiting days for cross-border settlements. Standard Chartered just flipped the switch on a tokenized deposit platform, with Ant International as its first major client.

What This Actually Does

It's not about minting a new speculative crypto token. This is about taking real, regulated bank deposits and representing them as digital tokens on a blockchain. The goal? Slashing the time and friction of moving money across borders—think seconds, not business days. It bypasses the old correspondent banking spaghetti by creating a shared digital ledger.

Why Ant International Matters

Landing a giant like Ant International, Alibaba's cross-border payments arm, isn't a pilot project. It's a production-scale endorsement. It signals that major financial infrastructure players are ready to move beyond proof-of-concept and into real-world utility, handling the kind of volume that makes traditional bankers sweat.

The Bigger Picture

This isn't happening in a vacuum. It's a direct shot across the bow of legacy payment rails. Banks are finally weaponizing blockchain's core strengths—transparency and speed—against their own clunky systems. Watch for other majors to follow, scrambling to offer similar 'institutional-grade' tokenization before they get left managing the analog money in a digital world.

One cynical finance jab? It's ironic that banks, after a decade of dismissing crypto, are now racing to build their own permissioned, closed-loop versions of it—call it blockchain with guardrails, or innovation with a hefty service fee attached.

Standard Chartered has launched a tokenized deposit solution allowing clients to MOVE funds from traditional bank ledgers onto blockchain infrastructure for real-time treasury operations, with Ant International becoming the first adopter.

The solution went live last week following a pilot of SGD-denominated liquidity transfers. ANT International can now access tokenized SGD and USD account balances on its Whale platform, a blockchain-based global treasury management system that operates around the clock.

The solution allows Ant International to shift treasury operations to continuous settlement rather than batch processing constrained by business day cutoffs. The bank emphasized the immutability, speed, and efficiency inherent to distributed ledger technology compared to traditional correspondent banking arrangements.

Mahesh Kini, global head of cash management at Standard Chartered, said in a statement that demand for real-time and 24/7 treasury management is accelerating as corporates increasingly rely on just-in-time liquidity. The bank positioned the deployment as setting a blueprint for commercial banks to facilitate fund movement from traditional ledgers to blockchain rails.

The integration enables Ant International to deploy liquidity across its entities with near-instantaneous settlement rather than waiting for standard banking hours. The solution supports SGD and USD transactions in Singapore, with additional capabilities for HKD, CNH, and USD in Hong Kong.

Kelvin Li, general manager of platform tech at Ant International, said the combination of Standard Chartered's banking capabilities with Ant's tokenization and global payment expertise enhances liquidity management by providing seamless access to working capital across the company's global operations.

The project builds on learnings from the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian, an initiative bringing together policymakers and financial institutions to test asset tokenization for improved market liquidity and efficiency. Both Standard Chartered and Ant International participate in Guardian.

Ankur Kanwar, head of transaction banking for Singapore and ASEAN at Standard Chartered, described tokenized deposits as having potential to enhance settlement efficiency and enable new financial use cases. He framed the partnership as supporting Singapore's development as a digital finance hub.

Standard Chartered has been active in tokenization initiatives, partnering with Ant International on multiple blockchain projects. The tokenized deposit rollout marks the bank's transition from pilot programs to commercial deployment of blockchain-based cash management products.

The system maintains integration with Ant International's existing Standard Chartered bank accounts while adding blockchain-based movement capabilities. Funds can FLOW between traditional accounts and tokenized balances, enabling treasury managers to optimize liquidity placement across both systems.