Standard Chartered frames collateral mobility as tokenisation's standout trade use case
Key points
- Standard Chartered's Kevin Chang predicts broad digital-asset adoption across trade finance and payments within twelve to twenty-four months.
- The bank identifies three distinct tokenisation layers in trade: trade instruments such as bills of lading, trade finance assets such as receivables, and tokenised money including stablecoins and CBDCs.
- Collateral mobility is described as a standout use case, with tokenised assets able to move rapidly across borders to support margin financing and repurchase agreements.
- Standard Chartered has already launched a collateral mirroring programme enabling clients to use tokenised money-market funds as off-exchange collateral held by a regulated third party.
- Regulatory readiness and cultural acceptance are identified as the principal open challenges before tokenisation reaches mainstream integration in global trade.
The fifth and final episode of a podcast series produced jointly by Trade Finance Global and Standard Chartered brings together two of the bank's digital-assets practitioners to assess where tokenisation sits today in global trade finance. Kevin Chang, Standard Chartered's Head of Trade and Working Capital for Hong Kong and GCNA and Group Head of Trade Digital Assets, and Emily Chan, Director and Trade Product Manager for Digital Assets, offer a structured view of what the technology actually changes rather than what it promises in principle.
Chang organises the opportunity across three layers. The first is tokenising trade instruments such as bills of lading and bills of exchange, converting paper-heavy documentary processes into transferable on-chain records. The second is tokenising trade finance assets, meaning receivables, payables, and invoices, which widens the investor base and unlocks working capital more quickly. The third, and described as most immediately relevant, is tokenised money and payments, covering stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and central bank digital currencies, which enable programmable cross-border settlement without the delays built into correspondent banking.
The use case the episode singles out as a standout is collateral mobility: the capacity to move pledged assets rapidly across borders to meet margin, repo, or trade financing requirements. Standard Chartered has already launched a collateral mirroring programme that allows clients to use tokenised money-market funds as off-exchange collateral held by a regulated third party. Chang projects that meaningful ecosystem-wide adoption across all three layers will materialise within twelve to twenty-four months, though the episode also acknowledges that regulatory readiness and cultural acceptance remain open questions for the industry.