Ant International has used HSBC’s tokenized deposits to sweep excess corporate treasury funds into a Franklin Templeton tokenized money market fund (MMF). The subscription was orchestrated through WhaleRTP, Ant’s blockchain-based treasury platform. The news emerged through LinkedIn posts rather than a formal announcement.
The attraction for a treasurer is timing. Conventional MMFs have dealing cut offs in the early afternoon and settle at best the same day, so any cash that might be needed overnight or first thing stays in a bank account earning little. A company such as Ant, which moves money in 17 currencies around the clock, accumulates idle balances across time zones for exactly that reason. If both the subscription and the redemption can happen at any hour, surplus cash can earn a fund yield until the moment it is needed, with the tokenized deposit providing the instant rail in and out.
This is the second time Ant has done this in four months. In June it started using digital share classes of an Amundi MMF issued on Ethereum, an arrangement kept within the Credit Agricole group, which owns Amundi and whose CACEIS arm acts as tokenization agent. The HSBC version lacks that vertical integration. The bank’s tokenized deposits run on a permissioned ledger, Franklin’s Benji platform issues fund tokens on public blockchains, and WhaleRTP, which already connects to more than 20 banks, appears to be the orchestration hub that joins the two. HSBC described it as a first transaction, so this is a pilot rather than a live product.
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