Ant International and OCBC Partner on Tokenized Cross-Border Payments

FinTech Ant International and Singapore bank OCBC are collaborating to enhance cross-border fund settlements.

The goal of the partnership is to explore innovations in tokenized deposits for global treasury management through Ant International’s Whale platform, according to a Tuesday (Nov. 5) news release.

“This collaboration will focus on achieving around-the-clock cross-border payments in real time between Singapore and Malaysia through the Whale platform, a next-generation treasury management solution that utilizes blockchain technology innovation, including advanced encryption and AI, to improve the efficiency and transparency of fund movements between bank accounts for better global liquidity management,” the release said.

The collaboration is an expansion of OCBC’s current partnership with Ant International, according to the release. It is the first time the Singapore bank will participate in a tokenization operation with Ant International.

“In this collaboration with Ant International, we will leverage our joint blockchain capabilities to enable faster, seamless multicurrency clearing and settlement for Ant International’s intragroup treasury and liquidity management,” Melvyn Low, head of global transaction banking at OCBC, said in the release. “With the corporate treasury function becoming increasingly strategic and a key driver of a business’s bottom line, this demonstration of how blockchain can help global businesses better meet their evolving treasury and liquidity needs is very timely.”

Kelvin Li, head of platform tech at Ant International, said in the release that the company hopes to combine its blockchain knowledge and OCBC’s understanding of the Singapore and Malaysia markets “to develop more effective global treasury management solutions for businesses in Asia and beyond so they can trade and transact across borders more seamlessly.”

Ant International partnered with DBS, another Singapore bank, in August to pilot a blockchain-powered treasury and liquidity management solution that aims to reduce the settlement of intragroup transactions from days to seconds.

“The solution, DBS Treasury Tokens, will enable Ant International … to use the digital form factor to achieve instant, multicurrency treasury and liquidity management on DBS’ permissioned blockchain for its entities across multiple markets,” PYMNTS wrote at the time.