HSBC Global Viewpoint · Oct 4, 2026 · 37m · 27m saved
With Lewis Sun, Global Head of Digital Currencies, Corporate and Institutional Banking at HSBC · Selene Chong, Global Head of Digital Assets, Corporate and Institutional Banking at HSBC · Kelvin Lee, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International
Ant International, the first corporate to use HSBC's tokenized deposit service, now moves about half of its cross-border cash between its own entities on a blockchain, at any hour and on any day, Kelvin Lee said.
Bank payment systems still run five days a week, and Ant's merchants and users do not stop. Most payment companies cover that gap by holding cash in advance in each market and marking up foreign exchange. Ant converts bank deposits into tokens, sends them, and turns them back into deposits.
"And now we have moved about 50% of this cross-border liquidity money movement out to the blockchain." — Kelvin Lee
Lewis Sun and Selene Chong run HSBC's digital currencies and digital assets businesses in corporate and institutional banking, and Kelvin Lee runs the platform technology team at Ant International that has built a blockchain treasury system with HSBC since 2019. The episode is part of the Redefining Treasury series and a cross-post of TMI's TreasuryCast.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 37 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
A tokenized deposit is an ordinary bank deposit on a blockchain, still paying interest and still covered by deposit insurance
Ant moves about half its cross-border liquidity on blockchain, Lee said, across more than 200 legal entities
Domestic fast payment systems cannot replace it: most handle neither wholesale payments, foreign currency nor cross-border transfers
Cash that arrives in Singapore at night can now be invested the same night through a tokenized money market fund
Chong's version: "when we sleep, but let's not have the money sleep"
The technology works; the obstacles are standards, legal recognition and settlement finality, both HSBC executives said
Sun's advice is to start with a treasury problem, not with tokenized deposits, even though he developed the product
1. What a Tokenized Deposit Is
The host asked the HSBC pair to define a tokenized deposit, explain how it differs from a stablecoin or a central bank digital currency, and say why it has become practical for everyday corporate treasury.
"A tokenized deposit is essentially a traditional bank deposit, but represented in digital form on a distributed ledger or blockchain." — Lewis Sun
Sun said it stays commercial bank money, backed by the bank and inside existing regulation
"It's still paid with interest." — Lewis Sun
It is still covered by deposit insurance, he said. He described three forms of digital money: a central bank digital currency is central bank money; stablecoins are typically privately issued, and lawmakers are trying to build a control framework around them; tokenized deposits are commercial bank money, the form companies already use every day.
What has changed is less the technology than client expectations, he said. Companies like Ant operate globally, digitally and around the clock, while much of treasury infrastructure still runs on business hours, batch processing and cutoff times. Tokenized deposits let existing bank money work in real time and be programmed.
