In a move that advances the institutional race toward blockchain-enabled payments, UBS and Ant International have signed a strategic partnership to explore tokenised deposits and real-time cross-border settlement. The agreement—formalized through an MoU at UBS’s flagship Singapore office—ties together two heavyweights: one of the world’s largest wealth managers and a global fintech giant behind some of the most widely used digital payment rails in Asia.

The collaboration signals a growing shift in global finance: traditional banks and high-scale fintech platforms are finally converging around interoperable, blockchain-based liquidity infrastructure. And this time, the work isn’t theoretical. Both parties are bringing production-grade systems to the table.

Inside the Deal: UBS Digital Cash Meets Ant’s Whale Platform

Under the MoU, Ant International will tap into the capabilities of UBS Digital Cash, the bank’s blockchain-based payment platform that completed a pilot phase in 2024. The platform aims to streamline treasury operations with programmable payments, improved traceability, and operational efficiencies that legacy correspondent networks often struggle to deliver.

UBS Digital Cash will support Ant’s global treasury flows by enabling faster, more secure, and more transparent transfers across multiple jurisdictions—useful for a company whose payment ecosystem spans retail, merchant, and institutional channels across dozens of markets.

In parallel, both firms will explore tokenised deposits, a concept gaining traction as a regulated counterpart to stablecoins. Tokenised deposits combine bank-backed money with blockchain features such as programmability, atomic settlement, and near-instant cross-border value transfer.

The partnership integrates UBS’s blockchain infrastructure with Ant’s proprietary Whale platform, its next-generation treasury and liquidity solution. Whale is built to allow real-time, multi-currency fund flows between Ant’s internal entities, sidestepping traditional cut-off times and offering more granular visibility into liquidity positions worldwide. By linking the systems, the companies aim to create a connected treasury environment that could rival today’s fragmented settlement processes.

Why It Matters: Context for the Industry

The UBS–Ant partnership lands at a pivotal moment. Major banks—JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC, and Standard Chartered among them—are increasingly launching their own blockchain-based deposit systems. Tokenised deposits are emerging as a regulated, bank-grade alternative to stablecoins and private blockchain money, addressing concerns around compliance and systemic risk.

What sets this collaboration apart is the scale and complementarity:

• UBS brings regulated digital asset infrastructure and reach across institutional markets.
• Ant brings high-volume payment flows, advanced fintech engineering, and a global merchant footprint.

For a sector still wrestling with settlement delays, capital inefficiencies, and complex liquidity management across time zones, a unified blockchain-powered treasury layer could be transformative.

This is also one of the strongest examples to date of a major bank integrating with an Asia-based fintech giant to test cross-border programmable money at operational scale.

Executive Takeaways

Young Jin Yee, Co-Head of UBS Global Wealth Management Asia Pacific and Country Head UBS Singapore, said the partnership builds on last year’s Digital Cash pilot and aims to set “new standards for transparency and efficiency.” The emphasis on multi-currency real-time settlement is particularly relevant for UBS clients navigating increasingly global portfolios.

Kelvin Li, Global Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, highlighted UBS’s track record in blockchain innovation and said both firms share a belief in the technology’s ability to reshape cross-border payments.

Their aligned messaging is notable: while many institutions still treat blockchain as an experiment, both UBS and Ant are talking about production-grade impact, not prototypes.

The Bigger Picture: Tokenised Money Is Moving Into Mainstream Infrastructure

The partnership reflects a broader shift toward regulated digital money systems that complement central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots and private tokenisation projects. Tokenised deposits in particular have momentum because:

• They run on bank balance sheets (unlike stablecoins).
• They integrate more naturally with existing KYC/AML frameworks.
• They can be used for both retail-facing and institutional transactions.
• They are programmable, enabling embedded finance use cases.

If UBS and Ant successfully operationalize their jointly connected system, it could become a blueprint for future cross-border treasury networks—one where fund transfers behave more like API calls than batch-processed instructions.

The implications extend to global liquidity management, FX execution, real-time settlement, and even corporate treasury architecture.

Bottom Line

The UBS–Ant International partnership is a meaningful step toward the institutional adoption of blockchain-enabled deposits and payment rails. By linking UBS Digital Cash with Ant’s Whale platform, the companies are targeting a future where cross-border fund flows are instant, transparent, multi-currency, and unbound by the friction of traditional financial plumbing.

It’s a collaboration that merges the credibility of a global bank with the scale and technological edge of a leading fintech—a pairing that could accelerate blockchain adoption far beyond pilot projects.

For now, the MoU marks the start of exploration and co-innovation. But if the industry’s momentum is any indication, tokenised deposits are inching ever closer to mainstream financial infrastructure—and UBS and Ant intend to be early architecture builders.