88% of large firms now use or test tokenised cash, DBS survey finds
Nearly nine in ten large businesses are already using or testing tokenised money, with 24% running it at scale, according to a DBS-commissioned survey that puts real corporate cash flows behind the tokenisation debate.
The EY-run study polled 422 business and finance leaders across 11 markets, including the U.S., China, Germany and the U.K., all at organisations with annual revenue above $500 million. It found 43% had limited live use in selected markets, 21% were running pilots or proofs of concept, and only 12% were still exploring the technology or not using it at all.
Stablecoins led the instruments respondents were using or planning to adopt at 63%, ahead of tokenised deposits at 53% and tokenised money market funds at 52%. The payoff respondents cited is speed: 71% said they had already seen or expected within two years improvements in real-time cross-border payments, and 65% said the same for treasury liquidity management.
Adoption still runs into familiar walls. Regulatory uncertainty, security risks and integration difficulties remain obstacles, and nearly two-thirds of respondents want banks to offer a single point of access to the tokenised money ecosystem, while 63% want help with pilots and integration. "For companies, fragmentation may add complexities and compliance obligations," Lim Soon Chong, DBS's group head of global transaction services, said. "The future will be defined by new forms of money and technology, and also shaped by trusted anchors who can orchestrate value movement across multiple networks."
DBS is also a vendor of the infrastructure it surveyed. It launched DBS Token Services in 2024, linking its permissioned blockchain to its payment systems for round-the-clock, condition-governed settlement. Citi said at its May investor day that hundreds of clients were moving close to $1 billion daily through Citi Token Services, mainly for liquidity and working capital, and in September the two banks completed a weekend dollar payment between Singapore and New York using tokenised deposits over the Swift Digital Ledger, which DBS said settled in minutes outside traditional banking hours.
