Citigroup introduced a deposit tokenization service for institutional clients
Date: 2023-09-19 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
Banking giant Citigroup announced the launch of a pilot project of the Citi Token Services platform. The solution uses blockchain and smart contracts to tokenize deposits and facilitate cross-border transfers.
“Institutional clients require “ongoing” programmable financial services. Citi Token Services will provide cross-border payments, liquidity and automated trade finance solutions 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” the announcement states.
The platform is based on a private blockchain, which is owned and fully controlled by Citigroup. The organization emphasized that clients will not need to deploy their own node to access the service.
The Danish shipping company Maersk and another contractor, whose name has not been disclosed, took part in the development of the project. During the preliminary test, the parties successfully tested the tokenization of deposits and payments to suppliers through smart contracts.
Citigroup noted that the solution is expected to reduce the processing time of cross-border payments to several minutes. How long the pilot stage will last is unknown at the time of writing.
In June 2023, there was a report from the analytical portal Bernstein. According to it, over the next eight years, the capitalization of the market for tokenized assets will exceed $5 trillion.
Large institutional investors are interested in it because it is a more regulated financial instrument. This was also stated by the CEO of the BlackRock fund, Larry Fink.
