DBS, Ant Group team up to launch treasury tokenisation platform Whale

The DBS treasury token is helpful for large companies like Ant International to reduce the settlement of intragroup transactions “from potentially days to seconds”, the bank said.

DBS treasury token helps Ant International settle intragroup transactions faster

DBS treasury token helps Ant International settle intragroup transactions faster and gain greater visibility into cash positions.

DBS has launched a new treasury token in partnership with Ant International, a unit of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, to streamline intragroup transactions for large corporates.

The DBS treasury token will enable corporates to settle payments within their group “at near real-time speeds” and reduce the settlement time “from potentially days to seconds”, DBS said in a statement on Friday (December 2).

It will also give corporate treasurers greater visibility, predictability and control over the cash positions of different entities within the group, the bank added.

“This new capability comes at a time when the treasury needs of businesses are evolving to meet the rise of e-commerce and on-demand services on a 24/7 basis,” said Lim Soon Chong, group head of global transaction services at DBS.

“DBS is constantly innovating to provide our corporate customers with the best-in-class solutions to enhance their operational efficiency and treasury management capabilities.”

Ant International’s head of platform technology, Kelvin Li, said the partnership with DBS will help address challenges faced by large corporates, such as reducing costs and transaction risks from cross-border payments.

“We are excited to work with DBS to enhance our Whale platform with new capabilities, such as enabling instant intragroup settlements,” said Li.

“The platform had already seen use cases in areas including instant tax refund services and cross-border payments for small and medium-sized enterprises.”

DBS, on the other hand, envisions for its blockchain to unlock new efficiencies and capabilities in traditional banking services – such as “programmable, fractionalised and atomic [instant] value transfer”, said Lim.

DBS’ latest project originates from the lender’s participation in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s tokenisation projects. It was one of the use cases tested in Project Guardian, an initiative that explores asset tokenisation, in which Ant Group is also involved, for its treasury management solution.