Most firms adopt tokenised money, DBS survey finds
A DBS survey of 422 global business leaders found 88 per cent have deployed or are piloting tokenised money use cases. Stablecoins are the most widely adopted instrument. Southeast Asia is the top destination for market expansion, and renminbi settlement is gaining traction.
A survey by Singapore bank DBS has found that nearly 90 per cent of businesses globally have adopted or are piloting tokenised money, a faster rate than expected, according to a senior executive.
Lim Soon Chong, the group head of global transaction services at DBS, said businesses are turning to tokenised money to improve liquidity management and access new markets. The survey, conducted between June and July, polled 422 global business and finance leaders from organisations with annual revenue exceeding US$500 million across 11 markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, China and Germany.
According to the survey, 88 per cent of respondents have deployed or are piloting tokenised money use cases. Roughly two-thirds said their businesses had either fully deployed tokenised money at scale or begun using it in selected locations. Stablecoins were the most widely adopted tokenised instrument, at 63 per cent, followed by tokenised deposits at 53 per cent and tokenised money market funds at 52 per cent.
“Our interpretation is that there are significant benefits that stablecoins offer,” said Lim. “Stablecoins, as you know, offer better fungibility across payment intermediaries, not just across banks. They are less cumbersome from a permissioning standpoint,” he added.
The survey also found that Southeast Asia was the top destination for businesses looking to expand into new markets, followed by Australia and New Zealand, with India ranking third. More than half of respondents in both Australia and the United Kingdom said they were considering using the Chinese renminbi for trade settlement over the next one to two years.
DBS said the renminbi’s recent appreciation is making renminbi settlement more attractive to Chinese exporters, who are increasingly offering better commercial terms for transactions denominated in the currency. “The Chinese authorities are clearly pushing the internationalisation of the renminbi, so we expect this to go up,” Lim said.