DBS survey finds 88% of large businesses are using or piloting tokenised money

DBS, Singapore's largest bank, has spent years pushing tokenized finance through MAS-backed initiatives such as Project Guardian, trialling tokenized deposits and bonds since 2022. Its survey results arrive as JPMorgan's JPM Coin and a wave of bank-issued stablecoins compete to settle corporate payments on-chain. The 88% figure reflects how far that experimentation has moved from pilot programs into the treasury operations of large businesses, rather than any sudden market shift.

Corporate treasurers now have a menu beyond cash and wires: stablecoins for near-instant cross-border settlement, tokenized deposits that keep funds inside the banking system, and tokenized money market funds for idle balances. Finance teams that adopt these rails can cut settlement times and counterparty risk, while banks slow to build tokenized-deposit infrastructure risk losing corporate deposits to faster-moving stablecoin issuers. CFOs now face a build-or-buy decision on custody and compliance tooling they could previously defer. (per newsbtc.com)

The real contest is between privately issued stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits as the default form of digital corporate money, with CBDCs trailing at 51% adoption in DBS's own count. A bank-run survey showing near-universal enthusiasm for tokenized money also serves DBS's commercial interest in selling these very services, so the 88% figure should be read as a sales pitch validated by genuine demand, not neutral market research.

DBS published its findings on October 28, and the next test is whether stablecoin usage, currently the most cited at 63%, converts into actual settlement volume rather than stated intent. Watch whether tokenized deposits and money market funds, at 53% and 52%, close that gap as banks roll out production systems, since that would show enterprise tokenization moving from pilot to default rather than remaining a survey statistic.