Tokenized money is increasingly becoming a mainstream tool for large corporations to move value instantly round-the-clock, with greater control across a wider network of markets, a survey showed on Wednesday.
According to a survey by DBS, 88 percent of businesses were already deploying or piloting tokenized money use cases, reflecting its potential to help institutions optimize liquidity and scale confidently across new trade corridors, markets and currencies.
This comes as businesses rewire business operations, treasury operations and financial management toolkits amid volatility and trade fragmentation.
In response to supply chain reconfigurations, over three in four respondents had to adapt their operations and expand into new markets, with Southeast Asia emerging as the top destination.
Around the same proportion said they experienced higher foreign exchange and energy price volatility, as well as less predictable transaction settlement outcomes, over the last 12 months.
To better address these shifts, innovations like tokenised money and artificial intelligence tools emerged as key solutions to address growing complexity. In addition, respondents were increasingly building exposure to multiple settlement currencies to support operations across emerging trade corridors.
These were the key findings from a new DBS report, The Great Rewiring: Money in a new order, which surveyed 422 business leaders across 11 markets.
“Organizations today are operating in a world shaped by shifting trade corridors, new architectures of money and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). To respond to these complexities, business leaders need to rethink how they leverage new technologies such as AI and tokenized solutions, manage liquidity, currencies and cross border flows, and build operating models that can adapt quickly to better withstand shocks,
“The organizations that succeed will be those that can turn complexity into optionality, adapt with agility, and capture opportunities in a rapidly changing world,” said Han Kwee Juan, Group Head of Institutional Banking, DBS.
Meanwhile, most leaders expect to reap the benefits of tokenized money within the next two years, reflecting growing confidence in the underlying technology and industry standards that enable widespread adoption.
72 percent of companies expect improved auditability and traceability within their businesses.
Other expected benefits include real-time cross-border payments (71 percent), stronger internal controls and governance (66 percent) and optimization of treasury liquidity management (65 percent).
Stable coins (63 percent) were the most widely adopted tokenized instruments, followed by tokenized deposits (53 percent) and tokenized money market funds (52 percent).
The deployment of artificial intelligence in treasury functions also reaped benefits, according to DBS.
Around three in four respondents said they experienced or expect improvements within the next two years across several areas – including cash and liquidity forecasting, payment investigations, post-settlement issue resolution, payments reconciliation and exception detection.
To provide their businesses with greater optionality, 78 percent of respondents had diversified their reliance on traditional settlement currencies by building exposure to multiple currencies that support more trading corridors.
Just 2 percent were not considering any other currencies, underscoring a broader shift towards a more diverse monetary system in the future.
Finance leaders nevertheless faced barriers in integrating new solutions as part of treasury transformation, said DBS.
These included regulatory and compliance uncertainty, data security and operational risks, limited internal expertise and integration complexity.
In response, businesses increasingly viewed banks as trusted innovation partners that can help provide access, implementation support and the infrastructure required to scale these solutions.
64 percent of respondents wanted banks to serve as a single point of integration into the tokenized money ecosystem, while 63 percent sought support for pilots, proofs of concept and integration.
In addition, 63 percent of businesses wanted access to bank-enabled technology and infrastructure platforms to help scale and adopt AI solutions.
These findings point to a broader evolution in the role of banks from financiers and transaction facilitators to strategic enablers of technology-led transformation.
“The next chapter of cross-border finance will go beyond improving speed and cost, to moving value intelligently and securely. AI adoption, digital assets, tokenized money and new settlement mechanisms offer opportunities for companies to optimize liquidity and to scale effectively,
“However, many emerging settlement networks are developing in parallel. For companies, fragmentation may add complexities and compliance obligations. The future will be defined by new forms of money and technology, and also shaped by trusted anchors who can orchestrate value movement across multiple networks,” said Lim Soon Chong, Group Head of Global Transaction Services at DBS.
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