Through the backing of Chinese conglomerate Ant Group, HSBC has announced successful trials testing tokenised deposits in intra-group treasury transactions.
Ant Group lent its blockchain capabilities to explore the potential of tokenised deposits within the HSBC network, finding real-time monetary movement between corporate and HSBC accounts.
Tests were run in accordance with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Fintech Supervisory Sandbox, testing other elements of tokenised deposits such as issuance, transfer and redemption.
The blockchain platform provided by Ant Group supported several different currencies such as USD, GBP, EUR, CNY and HKD to provide a wide range of use cases for the testing period.
Vincent Lau, Global Head of Emerging Payments, Global Payments Solutions at HSBC, stated: “The test exemplifies cutting-edge banking capabilities available in Hong Kong as a corporate treasury hub.
“At HSBC, we will continue to leverage tokenised deposit and other financial innovations to streamline and optimise treasury management for our clients.”
The bank has also explored testing use cases in central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots through the mBridge project which utilised cross-border CBDC transaction capabilities alongside Swift.
This is also not HSBC’s first foray into tokenised deposits either, as it was a part of the Regulated Liability Network trials in the UK and US.
