Standard Chartered and Ant International complete SGD settlement on blockchain: report

Standard Chartered and Ant International completed SGD-denominated liquidity transfers using Ant’s Whale platform.

British multinational bank Standard Chartered alongside Ant International has completed SGD-denominated liquidity transfers using Ant International’s blockchain-based Whale platform, The Asian Banker has learned.

According to a Nov. 5 report, Standard Chartered integrated with Ant International’s Whale platform to enhance the efficiency and transparency of fund movements between bank accounts. The intra-group liquidity management optimized Ant International’s treasury for cross-border transactions, the report reads.

Addressing the settlement, Mahesh Kini, global head of cash management at Standard Chartered, praised blockchain’s role, saying the technology is “revolutionizing treasury management and we are pleased to be early adopters of its use cases to enable our clients to take advantage of its extensive benefits.”

“Our collaboration with Ant International brings us ever closer to our goal of providing real-time, 24/7, transparent and secure liquidity flows for our clients.”

Mahesh Kini

Kelvin Li, head of platform tech at Ant International, added that following the blockchain test settlements that both sides achieved in Hong Kong, the companies are set to expand their partnership to Singapore.

“We hope to build on the momentum of our previous collaboration and continue developing new solutions to make global liquidity management even more seamless and secure for businesses around the world.”

Kelvin Li

The announcement follows Standard Chartered’s recent test settlement of a similar HKD-denominated transaction with Ant International.

Both companies are participants in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Ensemble Sandbox. Since May, Standard Chartered’s Hong Kong branch has been involved in Project Ensemble as part of its Architecture Community.

Throughout the project, Standard Chartered has collaborated to establish industry standards and assist in designing and implementing the Ensemble Sandbox, which tests various tokenization use cases. Ant International is also involved in the Ensemble Sandbox, developing two use cases using its Whale platform.