Swiss banking group UBS has struck a strategic partnership with Ant International to use tokenised deposits for real-time, multi-currency treasury payments, in one of the clearest institutional bets yet on blockchain as plumbing for cross-border liquidity management.
UBS has signed a strategic partnership with Ant International that will see the Chinese fintech spin-off use UBS Digital Cash for blockchain-based cross-border settlement and liquidity management, in a move that pushes tokenised deposits further into the mainstream of corporate payments.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed at UBS’s flagship office in Singapore on November 17, and focuses on using tokenised bank money to support Ant International’s global payments settlement and treasury flows.
Under the deal, Ant International will integrate UBS Digital Cash – a permissioned blockchain platform piloted in 2024 – into its global treasury operations. The bank-issued tokens will be used for cross-border, multi-currency payments that UBS says should offer greater efficiency, transparency and security than traditional correspondent banking channels.
UBS will also look to apply the same infrastructure to other corporate and institutional clients seeking more modern cross-border payment rails.
UBS Digital Cash meets Ant’s Whale platform
A second pillar of the partnership is a joint innovation programme around tokenised deposits, connecting UBS Digital Cash with Ant International’s internal treasury system, known as Whale.
Whale is Ant’s proprietary, blockchain-based treasury and settlement platform, developed since 2019 to manage the group’s internal money movements. The connected set-up is designed to enable real-time, multi-currency fund flows between Ant International entities, unconstrained by clearing cut-off times or time zones, and with a single shared ledger of record for reconciliation.
Young Jin Yee, Co-Head of UBS Global Wealth Management Asia Pacific and Country Head Singapore, said the collaboration builds on the momentum of the UBS Digital Cash pilot and aims to deliver a real-time, multi-currency solution that sets new benchmarks for transparency and efficiency.
“This partnership underscores our commitment to empowering our clients with best-in-class platforms and providing them with greater access to global financial markets,” they added.
Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, said both firms share a belief in the potential of tokenisation to transform cross-border payments.
Tokenised deposits step out of the sandbox
The partnership is firmly in the tokenised deposits camp rather than public-chain stablecoins.
Tokenised deposits are simply commercial bank deposits represented as tokens on a permissioned ledger. The credit risk sits with the issuing bank, in this case UBS, and the tokens remain inside the banking and prudential regulatory perimeter. For treasurers, that makes them easier to integrate with existing cash, FX and risk frameworks than many crypto-native alternatives.
Ant International is already a heavy user of tokenised deposit infrastructure. In the 12 months to mid-2025, its treasury department processed more than $1 trillion in payments, with around a third of that volume handled on its blockchain platform. Depending on the use case, the company says this has delivered 30-60% savings on liquidity and FX costs.
The UBS partnership adds another major global bank to a roster of institutions collaborating with Ant on tokenised money projects, alongside the firm’s work with HSBC, DBS and others through central bank-led pilots.
Project Guardian and Singapore’s tokenisation push
The announcement also reinforces Singapore’s positioning as a testbed for institutional tokenisation.
Ant International has been a key participant in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian, co-leading an FX industry workstream with ISDA that examined how tokenised bank liabilities and shared ledgers can improve cross-border payments.
That work concluded that interoperable tokenised bank liabilities could cut cross-border currency costs by around 12.5%, potentially saving businesses more than $50 billion in FX fees by 2030 if adopted at scale.
In a recent update at the Singapore FinTech Festival, Ant Group chairman Eric Jing highlighted the tokenisation of money for real-time cross-border settlement as a core pillar of the company’s strategy, pointing to Project Guardian pilots in which Ant demonstrated blockchain-based payments for SMEs engaged in global trade.
The UBS MoU effectively takes those concepts closer to live, bank-supported deployment in a wholesale treasury context.
