- Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, has partnered with Ant International to develop a blockchain-powered treasury and liquidity management solution.
- With DBS Treasury Tokens, Ant International will reduce settlement time for intra-group transactions from days to seconds, while reducing fees.
Singapore’s DBS Bank has announced a new partnership with Ant International, which will see the latter rely on the lender’s blockchain solutions for its treasury and liquidity management solutions.
DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, operates an approved blockchain solution that it has now integrated with Ant International’s Whale Platform, a treasury management solution that uses blockchain, AI and other technologies to improve efficiency and transparency.
Whale Platform now integrates the DBS blockchain and with it the DBS Treasury Tokens, which the lender recently launched. This provides the company with an instant treasury and liquidity management solution in multiple currencies for different markets.
Ant International is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, China’s technology and financial giant, which operates the world’s largest mobile and online payment platform, Alipay, with more than 1.3 billion users.
Kevin Li, the company’s head of platform technology, described the partnership as “an important step forward in addressing challenges such as reducing costs and transaction risks for cross-border payments.”
He added:
We have already seen successful use cases on our Whale platform in areas such as instant tax refund services and cross-border payments to SMEs, and we will continue to work with industry partners and leverage blockchain technology to enable more open and inclusive cross-border payments .
Blockchain in treasury and liquidity management
Ant International is based in Singapore, but has offices in the rest of Asia and beyond. It owns several subsidiaries in multiple different markets and needs to manage revenue collection, payments, cash positions and more in different currencies. These trades can sometimes last for days and tie up billions of dollars in liquidity. The new integration with the DBS Treasury Tokens solves this.
Lim Soon Chong, head of the bank’s global transaction services, commented:
This new capability comes at a time when corporate treasury needs are evolving to meet the rise of e-commerce and on-demand services 24/7. DBS’s permissioned blockchain is also the building block for new efficiencies and capabilities in traditional banking services, such as programmable, fractional and atomic value transfer.
The DBS Treasury Tokens come at a time when tokenization is taking root worldwide. The bank has participated in two of Singapore’s central bank token projects: Project Orchid and Project Guardian.
Chainlink eyes new market
As we’ve previously reported, tokenization unlocks trillions in liquidity, improves transparency, and opens up new business models. Some, like BCG, predict this will be a $10+ trillion market.
One of the key players in this rise is Chainlink. Tokenization relies on real-world data, which on-chain applications and smart contracts cannot access on their own. Chainlink’s oracles bridge this gap, while its interoperability solutions, such as CCIP, enable the movement of funds and messages across hundreds of blockchains.
LINK is trading on $10.46win 4% in the past day.