Singaporean banking giant DBS (NASDAQ: DBSDY) has announced plans to commercially launch blockchain-based treasury tokens.
The investment bank will continue with a pilot project and will work with China’s Ant International to roll out the offering. The solution, called the ‘DBS Treasury Tokens’, is expected to revolutionize liquidity management for global companies while optimizing internal and external processes.
Treasury tokens are digital representations of an organization’s reserves and offer a variety of use cases ranging from raising funds to performing corporate governance functions. DBS’s solution will be tailored to reduce resolution times for large-scale businesses without compromising security standards. The blockchain-based treasury tokens will give corporate treasurers control over cash positions while facilitating interoperability across different jurisdictions.
DBS will rely on its permissioned blockchain while leaning on Ant International’s Whale platform with its track record of commercial success. The liquidity management platform, with advanced encryption and AI, offers companies greater efficiency and transparency.
“This milestone with DBS is an important step forward in addressing challenges such as reducing costs and transaction risks for cross-border payments,” said Kelvin Li, an executive at Ant International. “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.”
DBS’s ledger is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and can be easily integrated into mainstream financial systems. In a commercial rollout, the treasury tokens can be used to reward users, raise money or stabilize token values, depending on enterprise needs.
“DBS Treasury Tokens and our partnership with Ant International demonstrate how companies can seize such opportunities with full confidence that their liquidity management capabilities can scale with them,” said Lim Soon Chong, Head of Global Transaction Services at DBS Bank.
The Project Guardian connection
Ant International and DBS have participated in several Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) initiatives to explore the application of blockchain in payments. Both companies experimented with various projects under Project Guardian, with DBS throwing its weight into asset tokenization.
On the other hand, Ant International’s participation in the studies was limited to cross-border transactions, contributing its technical expertise to the experiments. Given its global reach, the China-based company partnered with MAS to explore the regulatory implications of launching a regional blockchain-based payment solution.
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