A DBS survey published October 28 found that 88% of businesses in its sample were deploying or piloting tokenized-money use cases. The Singapore bank presented the results as evidence of growing interest in round-the-clock money movement, better liquidity management and expansion across trading corridors.
Respondents reported reworking treasury and finance processes amid shifting supply chains. The survey also found that more than three quarters of respondents expected artificial intelligence to improve treasury, payment or collection operations over the next two years.
Corporate Use Cases
Tokenized money addresses practical corporate needs, including moving funds among subsidiaries, paying suppliers in different currencies and reconciling balances after local payment systems close. Tokenized deposits and stablecoins can be evaluated for particular parts of those tasks, though successful integration requires approvals, liquidity management, accounting procedures and reliable conversion to conventional balances.
What the Survey Measures
The headline percentage combines testing with deployment and does not mean that 88% of large companies have replaced traditional bank accounts with stablecoins or cryptocurrencies. Firms may adopt privately operated payment systems or bank-issued tokenized deposits without taking exposure to volatile digital assets.
The survey measures reported interest rather than independently verified volumes or operating savings. A pilot can be a limited experiment, while live deployment might serve only a small fraction of a company's transactions. Firms may also define tokenized money differently, including privately issued bank liabilities, stablecoins and representations of deposits.
Institutional Adoption Considerations
Institutional buyers evaluate the cost of connecting new payment rails to existing systems before adoption. This includes identity checks, transaction reporting, asset servicing, reconciliation and recovery procedures. Settlement and counterparty risks differ across cash-like balances, securities and private credit instruments.
Progress in tokenized finance should be measured against promised operational improvements and measurable outcomes such as settlement volumes and cost savings rather than theoretical market size alone.
