Weekly briefing · Edition 18 · 31 August 2026 · covering 25 to 31 August
UOB and HSBC complete live tokenised deposit transfer on Swift blockchain
Edited by Cliffton Lee · Singapore · 26 items covered from 488 sources reviewed
Key points
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone confirmed on 26 August 2026 that the Eurosystem's Pontes DLT settlement in central bank money goes live in September 2026 with one-off onboarding fees, extending to 22.5 hours per business day and a 24/7 multi-currency service targeted for mid-2028, while arguing that fragmented securities law across 31 CSDs, 14 clearing houses, and 323 trading venues is the binding constraint.
UOB became the first Singapore-headquartered bank live on Swift's blockchain ledger, completing cross-border Hong Kong dollar tokenised deposit transfers with HSBC on 28 August 2026 and planning Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions in September, including domestic interbank payments that extend the ledger beyond its original cross-border framing.
Visa signed two Korean stablecoin partnerships in one week, adopting the Visa Stablecoin Platform with Shinhan Financial Group and, on 28 August 2026, agreeing with Hana-backed Dunamu, operator of Korea's largest exchange Upbit, to explore OpenUSD business models, the Bridge-led stablecoin unveiled in June with 140 partners.
The Japanese government and Bank of Japan intend to build a blockchain platform for real-time 24/7 wholesale CBDC settlement of government bonds and equities, forming a working group with the FSA, Ministry of Finance, and financial institutions, aiming to finalise plans in early 2027 for a launch in the early 2030s.
The Dallas Fed estimated on 25 August 2026 that a 10 percent drop in deposit stickiness from tokenised deposits could cut US banking-system lending capacity by roughly $580 billion in ten-year Treasury equivalents, as instant round-the-clock switching, potentially automated by AI agents, erodes the fixed-rate funding banks rely on.
Around it, Asia moved on multiple fronts at once, UOB going live on Swift's blockchain ledger, the Bank of Japan committing to a wholesale-CBDC securities settlement platform, and Visa signing two Korean stablecoin deals in a single week, while the Dallas Fed put a $580 billion number on what frictionless tokenised deposits could strip from US bank lending capacity.
UOB became the first Singapore-headquartered bank live on Swift's blockchain ledger, completing cross-border Hong Kong dollar transactions with HSBC a week after the inaugural HSBC-Standard Chartered transfer, with the ledger acting as an orchestration layer between separate bank tokenised-deposit platforms and handling interbank netting rather than processing the payments itself. What makes the September plan notable is UOB's intent to run Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions that include domestic interbank payments, a use case that pushes the ledger past the cross-border remit Swift originally positioned it for, plausibly to support 24/7 multi-currency corporate flows in currencies Singapore's FAST rail does not cover around the clock.
The Japanese government and Bank of Japan intend to build a blockchain platform for real-time 24/7 settlement of government bond and equity transactions using a wholesale CBDC, forming a working group with the FSA, Ministry of Finance, and financial institutions to select technology and split work between public and private sectors, with plans to finalise in early 2027 for an early-2030s launch. The driver is a stated concern about lagging internationally, a notable shift given the BOJ's earlier wholesale-CBDC focus was interbank settlement of tokenised deposits under Project Agorá rather than securities settlement.
Complementary reporting names MUFG, Nomura, and Circle among the institutions in the frame as Japan begins work on next-generation payment infrastructure for instantaneous, any-time settlement of stocks and JGBs, sitting alongside MUFG's separate Canton-based intraday JGB repo work and Nomura's settlement arrangement with Circle. The institutional roster signals this is more than a central-bank concept, with megabank and infrastructure participants already positioning around the eventual platform.
Partior signed an MOU letting SOOHO.IO's Ezys network settle cross-border multi-currency payments on Partior's live USD, SGD, and EUR tokenised-deposit rails, with Ezys automatically comparing rates and terms across institutions to route each transaction optimally. The tie-up draws on SOOHO.IO's role in Project Hangang, the Bank of Korea's CBDC trial, giving Korean deposit-token infrastructure an enterprise pathway into the Partior network that already settles commercial cross-border volumes for GSIBs.
Visa signed a strategic partnership with Dunamu, operator of Korea's largest exchange Upbit, to explore stablecoin payments, remittances, and AI-driven commerce, its second Korean deal in a week after Shinhan Financial Group agreed to adopt the Visa Stablecoin Platform. The Dunamu arrangement centres on business models for OpenUSD, the Bridge-led stablecoin unveiled in June with 140 partners sharing reserve revenue, and follows Hana Financial's $666 million move for a stake in Dunamu, drawing Korea's second and third largest financial groups into Visa's stablecoin orbit within days.
Visa joined BLOOM, the MAS initiative for settlement involving regulated stablecoins and tokenised deposits, whose participants already include JPMorgan and Circle, connecting card-settlement flows to a regulated multi-currency framework. The card-settlement angle explains the interest, since regular stablecoin settlement lets Visa cut the collateral or prefunding buffer it would otherwise require from partners such as Nium, which is also Visa's BLOOM partner and joined the Visa stablecoin settlement pilot in November 2025.
Northern Trust and Australia's Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation signed an MOU to explore tokenisation, digital assets, and digital cash including tokenised deposits and regulated settlement assets, targeting liquidity management, settlement efficiency, and interoperability between traditional and digital infrastructure. It builds on joint work under the RBA's Project Acacia, where Northern Trust enabled DvP settlement of tokenised carbon credits and CSC was an investor, extending a proven pilot relationship toward the cash leg.
CIMB Islamic Bank completed a pilot pairing tokenised sukuk with tokenised deposits, tokenising RM1.38 billion ($342m) of a RM1.68 billion Senior Sukuk Wakalah issuance across five-to-15-year tenors, subscribed by 12 institutional investors, with RM300 million issued as traditional sukuk. It is the first time Malaysia has brought the securities and money legs together on-chain, the pairing widely seen as essential to unlocking the automation and settlement gains DLT promises.
The RBA Payments System Board flagged a consultation on the role of RITS, Australia's real-time gross settlement system, in supporting settlement in a tokenised ecosystem, alongside its assessment of ASX clearing and settlement facilities. The consultation puts the cash-settlement anchor for tokenised markets onto the regulatory agenda, signalling how central bank money would connect to tokenised asset flows in Australia.
Japan's SBI committed $270 million for a 20 percent stake in Indonesian digital broker Ajaib to expand a yen-denominated stablecoin across Southeast Asia, a meaningful balance-sheet move behind JPY-pegged distribution in a USD-dominated regional stablecoin market. The scale signals SBI is building a distribution footprint for yen stablecoins rather than running a pilot, positioning a JPY option in corridors where USDC and OpenUSD are competing for the same enterprise flows.
World Liberty Financial deployed its $4 billion USD1 stablecoin natively on the Canton Network, currently issued by BitGo, with affiliate World Liberty Trust Company holding preliminary OCC conditional approval for a national trust charter that would let WLFI eventually self-issue. Native issuance matters ahead of DTC's tokenisation service launching in October on Canton and a private DTCC Besu network, since a natively-issued stablecoin avoids the extra layer that reserve-protocol wrappers such as USDCx add for traditional institutions.
Revolut began a phased rollout of EURR, a euro-backed stablecoin issued by Stripe-owned Bridge, integrated into the retail app and initially live for select customers in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana. Revolut is Bridge's first European client after its Luxembourg subsidiary secured a MiCA e-money issuer licence in late July, making this an early production test of a MiCA-authorised euro stablecoin at retail scale.
Fasset, the Dubai-founded stablecoin neobank, raised $68 million at a $1 billion valuation led by SBI, taking 2026 fundraising to $119 million, with the company reporting more than $40 billion in annualised transaction volume as of the raise, up sharply from $7 billion at end-Q3 2025. Capital targets Fasset's Own Network across more than 100 banking corridors and AI-driven settlement routing, another SBI position in stablecoin-native payments infrastructure this week.
Coinbase issued its first four tokenised US stocks, AAPLc, GOOGLc, METAc, and NVDAc, out of the Abu Dhabi Global Market on the Base blockchain, backed one-for-one and trading via DEXs including Aerodrome, with the tokens barred from circulating in the US and certain other jurisdictions. Unlike the structured-note approach of Ondo, Robinhood, and xStocks, which makes holders creditors of the issuer, Coinbase's tokens give a beneficial interest in real shares held on trust, though the article notes the trust characterisation could be questioned, more so for unvested tokens.
Franklin Templeton and HashKey launched a US tokenised money-market fund into Asian markets, extending Franklin's BENJI franchise through a regional distribution partner. The pairing of a US issuer with an Asia-licensed exchange is an operational template for distributing a tokenised MMF cross-border rather than a domestic-only product.
The SEC sent a draft proposal to the White House for an October rulemaking that would clarify how registered investment advisers and investment companies custody crypto assets under existing custody requirements. It aims to give the durable framework the current patchwork lacks, since the September 2025 no-action letter blessing state-chartered trusts and the December 2025 broker-dealer staff statement offer only transient protection and leave litigation risk in place.
The Dallas Fed published research estimating that a 10 percent drop in deposit stickiness could cut US banking-system lending capacity by roughly $580 billion in ten-year Treasury equivalents, since instant round-the-clock tokenised-deposit switching, potentially automated by AI agents, erodes the fixed-rate funding that deposits, which support about 80 percent of the system's interest-rate risk, currently provide. The authors take no view on whether adoption happens and flag their own limits, treating deposits as a single pool and tokenised deposits in isolation, which are assumptions worth carrying carefully.
The BIS Financial Stability Institute compared stablecoin rules across the EU, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, and the US, warning that activity restrictions bind the issuing entity rather than the wider group, so a nonbank issuer's affiliates can run the lending, staking, or custody the issuer cannot, with no group-wide oversight. Recent OCC trust-charter approvals show both dynamics live, with group structuring already the norm among US issuers and the OCC reading GENIUS Act permissible activities expansively at the entity level.
HM Treasury will give the Bank of England a secondary objective to drive digital innovation in payments regulation, sitting below its primary financial-stability mandate and applying to oversight of systemic payment systems including those using stablecoins and other digital settlement assets. It mirrors the equivalent secondary objective for central counterparties and CSDs introduced under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, formalising the BoE's role as innovation-conscious systemic regulator for tokenised payment rails.
Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel, at Jackson Hole, argued that stablecoins are dominated by central bank money as a settlement asset and that central banks should embrace DLT and bring reserves on-chain as native programmable assets rather than relying on bridges or intermediaries. The stance frames the ECB's Pontes work as a step toward, not an endpoint of, native on-chain central bank money for tokenised settlement.
BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos argued that a monetary system built on tokenised deposits looks more promising than one built on stablecoins, resting the case on the singleness of money and par redemption into central bank money that stablecoins struggle to guarantee. The framing is thought leadership rather than a rule, but it sets the analytical frame central banks are bringing to the stablecoin-versus-tokenised-deposit question.
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone confirmed on 26 August 2026 that the Eurosystem goes live in September with Pontes, its solution for settling DLT transactions in central bank money, with initial users paying only one-off onboarding fees, operating hours extending to 22.5 hours per business day, and a 24/7 multi-currency service targeted for mid-2028. His sharper message was legal rather than technical, arguing that tokenisation could reorganise the whole value chain by settling cash and asset legs atomically, but that Europe's fragmented securities law across 31 CSDs, 14 clearing houses, and 323 trading venues is the binding constraint, since advanced technology cannot compensate for fragmented law.
Thirty-nine state bankers associations, representing thousands of banks, are building the BankChain Alliance for tokenised deposits, stablecoins, and automated settlement, selecting a technology partner now for a 2027 launch, positioned as industry-owned, industry-designed, and industry-governed. It targets the fragmentation smaller US banks face, where The Clearing House solution reflects large-bank requirements and networks such as Hazel and Cari are not industry-owned, echoing Europe's CBMT and the UK's GBTD consortia.
Vanguard and Wellington Management posted tokenised money-market-fund shares, not Treasuries, as collateral on the Canton Network, tokenised using Nasdaq technology and managed through Nasdaq's Calypso platform. The selling point is that digital and traditional collateral sit in one pool through the same interface, so firms need no separate system or parallel workflow, which lowers the integration barrier that keeps tokenisation off the priority list.
EDX Markets, the institutional exchange backed by Citadel Securities, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab, integrated Figure's YLDS yield-bearing digital security as both collateral and a treasury asset, validating a core use case Figure pointed to when YLDS launched in February 2025. A tier-1 institutional venue accepting a tokenised yield-bearing instrument as collateral is operational participation rather than a logo on a release.
A Wyoming SALT panel argued that around-the-clock trading depends less on the venue than on the collateral and cash settling at the same speed, with Digital Asset's Yuval Rooz sizing roughly $40 trillion of eligible collateral sitting idle across jurisdictions because it cannot move fast enough. The framing links 24/7 trading directly to blockchain post-trade plumbing, the DTCC Treasury and equity work and the JGB project with Mizuho, MUFG, and JSCC.
Worth watching next
Whether UOB’s September Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions on Swift’s blockchain ledger confirm a domestic interbank use case, and which additional banks join.
The Japanese working group’s early-2027 planning deadline for the wholesale-CBDC securities platform, and whether it favours a BOJ-led rail or the private Canton work MUFG and Mizuho are running.
How Korean stablecoin legislation treats bank-issued versus exchange-affiliated tokens, given Visa’s Shinhan and Dunamu deals sit on different sides of that line.
The SEC‘s October crypto-custody rulemaking for RIAs, and whether a durable framework unblocks asset managers that stalled on the transient 2025 no-action relief.
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