DBS Survey: Four in Five Businesses Already Moving on Tokenised Money

A DBS survey of 422 business leaders across 11 markets finds that more than eight in ten respondents have begun adopting tokenised money, with most expecting to realise tangible benefits within two years. The report, titled “The Great Rewiring: Money in a new order”, identifies liquidity management, cross-border payments, and market expansion as the primary drivers behind adoption. Stablecoins lead uptake at 63%, ahead of tokenised deposits at 53% and tokenised money market funds at 52%.

The survey also captures a shift in treasury infrastructure thinking. Over three in four respondents said they are restructuring treasury and finance operations to build resilience, and 78% have already diversified away from dependence on traditional settlement currencies by building exposure to multiple currencies. Only 2% of respondents were not considering additional currencies, a figure that points to structural repositioning rather than opportunistic hedging. Southeast Asia is identified as the top destination for businesses pursuing new-market expansion.

Banks figure prominently in how businesses plan to navigate implementation. Sixty-four percent of respondents want a bank to serve as a single point of integration into the tokenised money ecosystem, and 63% want pilot and proof-of-concept support. A comparable 63% are seeking bank-enabled infrastructure to scale artificial intelligence tools in treasury functions. The barriers cited, including regulatory uncertainty, data security concerns, limited internal expertise, and integration complexity, suggest demand for institutional intermediaries is growing alongside adoption intent rather than ahead of it.

On the AI side, roughly three in four respondents reported experiencing or anticipating improvements within two years across cash and liquidity forecasting, payment reconciliation, payment investigations, post-settlement resolution, and exception detection. The survey’s framing positions AI and tokenised money as converging rather than competing priorities, with treasury transformation pulling both threads simultaneously.