Tokenisation could drive real-time cross-border payments, Ant Group CEO Eric Jing Xiandong told an audience at Hong Kong FinTech Week on Monday, a topic he elaborated on while extolling the progress that Alipay has made in the city.
“With tokenised deposits, that’s a really, really, really huge value for cross-border payments,” Jing said in a panel discussion with Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. “If we can really solve … cross-bank, cross-currency [issues], then we are really moving to real-time settlement on a global scale.”
Tokenisation was one of two major themes at FinTech Week, along with artificial intelligence (AI), which Jing noted would also be transformative in the financial sector in the form of greater personalisation. Tokenised deposits improve efficiency by eliminating middlemen, operating 24/7, and being programmable for automated execution when conditions are met, according to Jing.
Thematically, the focus on tokenisation builds on a shift in focus for FinTech Week that started last year, as momentum in the cryptocurrency space slowed. Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Eddie Yue Wai-man noted the difference between tokenisation and cryptoassets in his opening remarks, calling the latter “more speculative” and in need of “guardrails to protect investors”. Tokenisation records the value of other assets on a programmable ledger, he explained.
“Tokenisation has the potential to create hyperconnectivity between users, data and services that are essential to driving economic progress,” Yue said.
For Jing, tokenisation could be another critical component of cross-border transactions, something that has become increasingly important for Ant Group, the operator of Alipay, one of China’s top two mobile payment apps. Ant is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.
Alipay has been making inroads in Hong Kong through a concerted effort to make mobile payments through the mainland service more common. AlipayHK now covers 90 per cent of merchants and has 4.2 million users, Jing said, covering more than half of Hong Kong’s population and up by nearly 1 million users from two years ago. He also noted Alipay’s integration with 14 other mobile wallet platforms from nine countries.
“We’re always thinking [about] what we can do [to] work with other partners, making sure other cross-border travellers’ lives can be much easier, making their cross-border experience a local one,” Jing said.
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