Payment Giant Ant CEO Eric Jing: Tokenization is Key to Financial Transformation

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead Fadilpašić

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October 29, 2024

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Ant Group CEO Eric Jing Xiandong said that tokenization has the potential to power real-time cross-border payments.

Tokenization and AI were the two main themes of the Hong Kong FinTech Week.

Speaking to the attendees on Monday, in a panel discussion with Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Jing noted that this technology could be transformative for the financial sector.

Notably, tokenized deposits have the ability to improve efficiency: they remove middlemen, operate 24/7, and are programmable for automated execution, he said.

Jing stated, according to the South China Morning Post, that

“With tokenised deposits, that’s a really, really, really huge value for cross-border payments. If we can really solve … cross-bank, cross-currency [issues], then we are really moving to real-time settlement on a global scale.”

Tokenization may be one of the key pieces for cross-border transactions. This is increasingly important for Ant Group, the operator of mobile payment giant Alipay, the report noted.

Also contributing to the discussion, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Eddie Yue Wai-man argued that tokenization “has the potential to create hyperconnectivity between users, data and services that are essential to driving economic progress.”

On the other hand, Yue argued, cryptoassets are “more speculative” and require “guardrails to protect investors.”

The Narrowing Web3-TradFi Gap

Interestingly, the Hong Kong government continues to promote the Web3 sector and its growth, even if the tech industry has lately turned to AI.

Two of the aspects the Chinese government particularly supports, per the report, are tokenization and stablecoins. New stablecoin regulations from the HKMA are anticipated by the end of this year.

Gary Tiu, executive director of OSL, a Securities and Futures Commission (SFC)-licensed and insured digital asset platform, argued that the changing Web3 landscape in Hong Kong is “a result of maturation.”

“We narrowed the gap between Web3 and [traditional finance] by a huge margin,” Tiu said.

He also suggested that, unlike earlier tokenization efforts, current tokenization and related innovations could have a transformative effect on the finance industry.

Tiu argued that “real estate by its very nature is highly illiquid. Putting it onto a blockchain isn’t going to make it more liquid. But money market funds actually are highly liquid. So by putting something which is already highly liquid into an environment where you can optimise around the operational cycle, then there might be some benefits.”

Meanwhile, OSL revealed two tokenized funds during FinTech Week: one in collaboration with ChinaAMC and the other with Franklin Templeton.

Users and Inbound Payments Surge

Jing stressed that cross-border payments are a major focus for Alipay. The company integrated with 14 mobile wallet platforms from nine countries.

Additionally, it works to ease the use of mobile payments for foreign visitors, which is one of the government’s main goals in its tourism-boosting efforts.

“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.

He added that AlipayHK currently has 4.2 million users and covers 90% of merchants.

Notably, it covers more than half of Hong Kong’s population, up by nearly 1 million users from two years ago, the SCMP reported.

Meanwhile, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, Alipay’s rival, has also recorded a fourfold increase in inbound payments over the past year, said Forest Lin, head of Tencent Financial Technology. This comes as more visitors arrive in China after the pandemic.