Citi and Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank have launched a 24/7 United States dollar clearing service integrated with tokenised deposits, becoming the first banks to complete near real-time cross-border dollar payments using the platform and marking the latest expansion of Citi's digital payments network.

The first live transaction transferred United States dollar funds during the United States Independence Day holiday weekend from a Citi account in London held by Phillip Capital Inc to an account at Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand for Phillip Securities Thailand, demonstrating cross-border payments outside traditional banking hours.

SCB becomes the first financial institution globally to deploy Citi's combined 24/7 USD Clearing and Citi Token Services offering.

Citi said the service combines its always-on dollar clearing network with Citi Token Services, which tokenises deposits on a private permissioned blockchain operating within the regulated banking system. The integrated platform connects more than 300 financial institutions across over 50 markets and is designed to allow corporate and institutional clients to initiate and receive dollar payments at any time with near-instant settlement.

Thanawatn Kittisuwan, head of transaction banking at Siam Commercial Bank, said: "At SCB, we continuously invest in innovative capabilities that help our corporate and institutional clients operate more efficiently in an increasingly global and connected business environment." He added that the collaboration made SCB "the first bank in Thailand to leverage tokenization to enhance cross-border USD capabilities", helping clients overcome operational constraints when conducting international business.

According to the companies, the launch forms part of Citi's broader digital assets strategy and its "network of networks" approach, which aims to support payments across multiple banks, markets and payment infrastructures.

Mridula Iyer, Asia South head of services at Citi, said: "Our enhanced 24/7 USD Clearing solution integrated with Citi Token Services is an industry-first that bridges traditional and digital rails to expand our suite of always-on client solutions."

Citi's head of payments, Debopama Sen, told Reuters that the bank was seeing growing demand from clients for instant international transfers between accounts held at different banks. The newswire added that instant international transfers using tokenised deposits within Citi accounts are approaching $1 billion daily, while the bank's global payments division processes around $6 trillion in transactions each day across 180 countries.

---