Ant International and UBS Team on Blockchain-Based Tokenized Deposits

Digital payments firm Ant International has launched a blockchain-centered partnership with banking giant UBS.

The collaboration, announced Monday (Nov. 17), will see the companies explore the use of blockchain-based tokenized deposits to support Ant International’s global payments settlement and liquidity management.

The arrangement involves Ant using UBS Digital Cash, a blockchain-based payment platform the bank introduced in November 2024, the companies said in a news release.

“This collaboration with Ant International builds on the momentum of our UBS Digital Cash pilot launch last year,” said Young Jin Yee, co-head of UBS Global Wealth Management in the Asia Pacific region and head of the bank’s Singapore operations.

“By combining our expertise in digital assets with Ant’s advanced blockchain technology, we are working together to deliver a real-time, multi-currency payment solution that sets standards for transparency and efficiency.”

According to the release UBS Digital Cash will support Ant International’s global treasury operations with blockchain-based payments that allow for greater efficiency, transparency and security, while UBS applies this expertise to bolster cross-border payments for its clients.

The two companies will also look into “joint innovations” in tokenized deposits using Ant’s blockchain-based treasury management platform Whale.

“The connected solution serves to enable real-time, multi-currency fund flows between Ant International’s entities in a transparent manner, unconstrained by traditional payment cut-off times for better global liquidity management,” the release added.

In related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the potentially “narrow” future for blockchain-based payments.

“Look across the broader blockchain payments landscape, and a pattern emerges,” that report said. “The success stories that involve true operational adoption tend to be narrow, domain-specific and integrated into existing industry workflows.”

Things like supply chain finance, cross-border corporate payouts, invoice factoring, loyalty points settlement and B2B treasury functions “are all closed-loop or semi-closed-loop systems with well-defined participants and compliance requirements,” the report added.

The recent news that NH NongHyup, one of the largest banks in South Korea, had launched a proof-of-concept to test a stablecoin-based VAT refund system in collaboration with Avalanche, Fireblocks, Mastercard and Worldpay highlights the appeal of crypto’s narrow utility. VAT refunds for tourists are a specific but high-volume use case, making them ideal for testing automation to track benefits around speed, cost reduction and user experience.

“We do think it’s going to be real,” Mark Nelsen, head of product for Visa Commercial Money Solutions, said during a discussion last week on his company’s launch of creator-targeted digital asset solutions. “The technology is too efficient. It’s just right for this type of deployment.”