Tokenised deposits

HSBC and Ant International launch tokenised deposits in UAE

HSBC and Ant International have completed the first live tokenised deposit transactions in the UAE: real-time AED transfers inside the country and USD corridors to Hong Kong and Singapore, routed through WhaleRTP and HSBC Tokenised Deposit Service. Ant becomes HSBC TDS’ first Middle East client.

Marsel ShadmanovCEO and Partner, Garant Business Consultancy · banking, structuring, UAE taxes

8 October 20266 min read

Illustration for an article covering the launch of pilot tokenised deposit transactions in the United Arab Emirates. On the sixth and seventh of October two thousand and twenty six, the British bank Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and the fintech arm Ant International, part of the Ant Group ecosystem, completed the first live tokenised bank deposit transactions in the Emirates. Two corridors were used. The first — transfers in the dirham of the United Arab Emirates (AED) inside the country. The second — transfers in United States dollars from the Emirates to Hong Kong and Singapore. Transfers are initiated through Ant International’s proprietary blockchain treasury platform called WhaleRTP and executed through HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service, which works twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Ant International becomes the first HSBC TDS client in the Middle East. WhaleRTP is already supported by more than twenty global banks and handles more than seventeen currencies, among them the United States dollar, the Hong Kong dollar and the Emirati dirham. For businesses operating in the Emirates, the shift is practical — faster, round the clock corporate payments across time zones, independent of standard settlement windows.

Common questions on this topic

What is a tokenised deposit?

A tokenised deposit is a commercial-bank deposit represented as a digital token on the issuing bank’s distributed ledger. Legally it remains an obligation of the bank to its client — like a regular deposit — but it can move between clients of the bank and, where interoperable, between banks, around the clock and in near real time, outside standard settlement cycles.

How is a tokenised deposit different from a stablecoin?

A stablecoin is normally issued by a specialised fintech with a separate reserve. A tokenised deposit is issued by the bank itself and sits on the bank’s balance sheet — so it is governed by banking regulation, deposit protection (where applicable) and the bank’s KYC and AML rules. For corporate treasury it is closer to a familiar banking product than to a crypto asset.

Is this a full product already, or just a pilot?

As of 7 October 2026, HSBC and Ant International confirmed the first live transactions on two corridors — AED inside the UAE and USD from the UAE to Hong Kong and Singapore. HSBC Tokenised Deposit Service is live in the UAE and in five other global markets. In parallel, Ant International is extending a similar collaboration with OCBC. Moving from pilot to mass-market service is the next step.

Which UAE businesses can use this today?

At the pilot stage — large HSBC corporate clients with international treasury operations that need around-the-clock settlement between accounts across jurisdictions. As the service expands, mid-market firms operating in the UAE–Asia corridors will come next. Small businesses are more likely to see the effect indirectly, through faster and cheaper rails underneath payment gateways and cross-border payouts.

What is the practical benefit for a corporate client?

Three effects: (1) instant intra-group transfers between accounts of the same holding across countries, without waiting for a settlement day; (2) less need to park extra liquidity in each jurisdiction — money moves when the need appears; (3) cheaper cross-border transactions in the main currencies (USD, HKD, AED), thanks to a single platform rail.

What happened

HSBC and Ant International have launched pilot tokenised deposit transactions in the UAE. This is the first live deployment of HSBC Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS) in the Middle East. Ant International becomes HSBC TDS’ first client in the region and connects the service to its own treasury management platform, WhaleRTP.

Two corridors: AED inside the country, USD to Asia

The pilot covered two practical scenarios. First — transfers in the dirham of the United Arab Emirates (AED) between accounts inside the country, settled in real time, outside the standard settlement day. Second — transfers in United States dollars from the UAE to the Asian financial centres of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Neither corridor is a demo or a regulatory sandbox: the parties say the transactions were executed with real bank money on a corporate client’s accounts. For the market this matters, because the service is already a live product of a commercial bank, not a test environment.

How it works technically

On the client side (Ant International), the payment is initiated inside the WhaleRTP platform — Ant International’s blockchain-based treasury infrastructure, built as a single front end for corporate cash management. On the bank side (HSBC), the settlement is executed through the Tokenised Deposit Service — an internal HSBC product that issues a tokenised deposit as an obligation of the bank to the client and moves the token between accounts instantly.

WhaleRTP is already supported by more than twenty global banks, HSBC among them, and handles more than seventeen currencies, including USD, HKD and AED. At the UAE launch, HSBC Tokenised Deposit Service is live in six jurisdictions.

Why this matters for business in the UAE

The core gain is speed and predictability of settlement. For a company with an international structure, money between accounts in different countries moves at the moment the decision is taken, not on the next business day. For treasury, this removes two problems at once: there is less need to park spare liquidity in each jurisdiction just in case, and there is no need to align operating cycles with banking hours across time zones. This logic is particularly valuable for anyone already running a corporate bank account in the UAE and building the Emirates into a regional hub.

The second effect is that it strengthens the UAE’s position as a node of tokenised finance. HSBC did not choose the Emirates by accident for the first live TDS site in the Middle East — the ingredients were already in place: working regulators (the Central Bank of the UAE, DIFC, ADGM), a tokenisation ecosystem at the level of national infrastructure, and the first wave of corporate clients ready for DLT-based products. The same picture is visible at the retail-infrastructure layer, with Jaywan — the UAE national payment card underpinning domestic digital settlement.

Participant quote

"With the support of regional bank partners such as HSBC, we aim to establish a global treasury hub in the Middle East in the near future to better support our global operations," — Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech and Senior Vice President, Ant International.

Context: part of a wider wave

The HSBC pilot is not an isolated step. In parallel, Ant International is extending a similar tokenised deposit partnership with OCBC. Inside the UAE market, a comparable agenda is building up fast: Commercial Bank of Dubai and CBMT ran their own tokenised deposit pilot, First Abu Dhabi Bank became the first bank in MEA to settle a tokenised deposit over SWIFT, and Dubai Financial Market and ADX are developing infrastructure for tokenised assets.

What this means over the next six months

For a corporate client in the UAE, the practical effect will show up gradually: first — large HSBC account holders with international treasury operations, then — mid-market firms in the UAE–Asia corridors, then — mass-market cross-border payouts via standard banking products. Small businesses will feel the effect indirectly, through faster and cheaper rails that payment providers will build on top of this rail.

For the market as a whole, the headline signal is that tokenised deposits have moved out of the "experiment" bucket and into the "live commercial-bank product" bucket. And the first Middle East deployment has gone through the UAE.

Topics:Tokenised depositsHSBCAnt InternationalWhaleRTPUAE fintechTreasury managementCorporate paymentsDirhamBlockchain bankingOctober 2026