HSBC and Ant International complete first Middle East tokenized deposit pilot

HSBC and Ant International, the fintech arm of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, have completed pilot transactions using HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS) in the United Arab Emirates, the companies disclosed in early October 2026. The pilot marks the first time HSBC’s tokenized deposit platform has been deployed in the Middle East, following earlier rollouts in other regions.

The pilot tested two distinct payment corridors. The first covered real-time, dirham-denominated transfers within the UAE itself. The second covered cross-border, U.S. dollar-denominated transfers originating in the UAE and settling in Hong Kong and Singapore — two markets where HSBC has a substantial institutional and corporate banking presence. Testing both a domestic and a cross-border corridor in the same pilot suggests HSBC and Ant International were evaluating the platform’s utility for both local liquidity management and international treasury operations.

Ant International initiated the transactions through WhaleRTP, its blockchain-based treasury management platform built for corporate and institutional clients moving funds across borders. WhaleRTP transactions were routed into HSBC’s TDS infrastructure for settlement, with the tokenized deposit structure intended to compress the settlement time and operational friction that typically accompanies cross-border corporate payments moved through conventional correspondent banking chains.

HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service is now live in six global markets following the UAE pilot, part of a broader push by large global banks to build blockchain-based settlement rails for institutional and corporate clients that sit alongside, rather than replace, traditional payment infrastructure. For HSBC, extending TDS into the Middle East gives the bank a regional reference deployment it can point to with other corporate treasury clients in the Gulf; for Ant International, it adds another settlement corridor to WhaleRTP’s network as the company continues building out cross-border treasury infrastructure for its institutional client base. Neither company disclosed transaction volumes or a timeline for moving beyond pilot status into full commercial use in the UAE.