Ant International has wrapped up pilot payments in the UAE on HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS). That makes it HSBC’s first Middle East client on the service. Ant announced the expanded tie up on 6 October.
Two routes were tested. One moved dirham tokenised deposits within the UAE in real time. The other sent US dollar tokenised deposits out of the UAE to places like Hong Kong and Singapore.
Each payment kicked off on WhaleRTP, Ant’s own blockchain treasury platform, and HSBC’s TDS carried it out instantly, using a workflow the pair designed together. Ant says WhaleRTP now works with over 20 banks, HSBC included, and moves money in more than 17 currencies, dirhams among them.
HSBC runs TDS in six markets: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, the UK, the US and the UAE. Currencies covered are CNH, HKD, SGD, EUR, GBP, USD and AED. The dirham came on board when the service launched in the UAE on 22 June, and clients can shift balances between HSBC accounts at any hour.
This isn’t a new relationship. Ant was the first TDS client back in Hong Kong in May 2025, and HSBC later handled dollar transfers for it between Hong Kong and Singapore.
Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech and SVP at Ant International, said the Gulf is where Ant wants its next treasury base. “With the support of regional bank partners such as HSBC, we aim to establish a global treasury hub in the Middle East in the near future to better support our global operations,” he said.
For a group moving cash across dozens of markets, being able to shift liquidity outside banking hours while the money stays in a regulated bank is the real draw. HSBC, for its part, gets to prove TDS can plug into a client’s own blockchain setup. Neither side has said when the UAE routes go from pilot to live, or how much cash it could free up.
Digital Trade Outlook’s View: The Treasury Platform Sits With the Client
Look at where the payment starts. It’s Ant’s platform giving the order and HSBC executing it, so the bank becomes a rail plugged into a corporate system rather than a portal the client logs into. The UAE has seen a run of these tokenised money tests from global banks lately, and it’s turning into something of a proving ground. If Ant’s planned Middle East treasury hub ends up running on this setup, other corporates may well follow.
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