Ant International and Standard Chartered Bank (NASDAQ: SCBFF) have announced the successful completion of cross-border liquidity transfers on the former’s blockchain-based platform.
Standard Chartered joined Ant’s Whale to leverage its liquidity solutions, the bank revealed in a press release. Whale is a blockchain-powered treasury solution that provides liquidity management for multinationals, especially for cross-border transfers. It uses blockchain for instant transfers, lower costs and transparency.
The bank provided few details about the transaction, including which entities were involved. However, it showed that the liquidity transfers were denominated in Singapore dollars. Although Whale is primarily used for Hong Kong dollar transactions, it is currency agnostic and can be customized to customer needs.
“Blockchain technology is revolutionizing treasury management, and we are pleased to be early adopters of its use cases so that our customers can enjoy its extensive benefits,” said Mahesh Kini, Global Head of Cash Management of Standard Chartered.
Kini believes that by integrating emerging technology such as blockchain, the British bank can offer its customers greater access, insight and control over their liquidity and working capital.
“Our partnership with Ant International brings us ever closer to our goal of providing our customers with real-time, 24/7, transparent and secure liquidity flows,” he added.
The settlement was the first between the two financial industry giants in Singapore, where Ant is headquartered. However, they have conducted similar studies in Hong Kong.
A week ago, they announced the successful completion of the first HKD-denominated settlement through Whale between Ant’s entities as part of Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble, which explores the use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in innovative use cases.
Commenting on Standard Chartered’s participation in the HMO pilot, Kini said it positions the bank to respond to the changing needs of customers as they demand “better access, visibility and control of their working capital… ‘always-on’ availability, liquidity and payment speed. flows.”
Ant originally developed Whale for internal use so that its many subsidiaries could seamlessly move money around the world. Through Alipay+ and other subsidiaries, Ant has a huge presence in the payments industry, making instant settlement a direct benefit to its core business. Over time, the Chinese conglomerate’s Singapore-based subsidiary has expanded access to Whale to other multinationals in need of similar services. Whale is especially popular with banks; In addition to Standard Chartered, other clients include France’s BNP Paribas (NASDAQ: BNPQF) and Britain’s HSBC (NASDAQ: HSBC).
Meanwhile, Ant also announced that OCBC, Singapore’s second-largest bank, would integrate Whale and join its rival DBS (NASDAQ: DBSDF), which two months ago partnered with Ant to issue “DBS Treasury Tokens” .
“In this collaboration with Ant International, we will leverage our joint blockchain capabilities to enable faster, seamless multi-currency clearing and settlement for Ant International’s intra-group treasury and liquidity management,” said Melvyn Low, Head of Global Transaction Banking at OCBC. .
Japan is going deeper into digital asset protection
In other news, Japan’s financial sector watchdog has proposed new measures to prevent a repeat of the FTX debacle.
The Financial Services Agency (FSA) is proposing to add an ‘asset custody order’ to the Payment Services Act for all digital asset trading platforms. This order would prohibit them from transferring the assets of local clients abroad. According to Nikkei, the proposal was first made by a working group within the Financial System Council, an agency under the FSA.
“The aim is to properly protect the assets of individual investors, as there have been a series of cases of illegal leaks of cryptocurrencies,” the agency said.
It is the latest regulatory effort worldwide aimed at preventing a recurrence of FTX. When the global stock market collapsed two years ago, clients in dozens of jurisdictions lost their money, even in cases where they had used the exchange’s local subsidiaries.
Japan was one of the few countries where FTX customers did not lose their money. National regulation of digital assets already required exchanges to store users’ assets locally, making the new directive (somewhat) redundant. FTX Japan resumed operations three months after its parent company went bankrupt following a three-month suspension by authorities to contain any possible infections. In February, it reopened its platform and allowed customers to withdraw their funds, which is in stark contrast to other countries where FTX customers have yet to receive their funds.
However, Japanese regulators have been cautious since the Mount Gox collapse in 2014 and the $500 million Coincheck exchange hack in 2018. The country has even steered clear of the global digital asset spot ETF fever, which has spread in Asian countries such as Hong Kong. and Thailand, and local experts say this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
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