A DBS Bank survey of 422 corporate finance leaders across 11 countries found that 88% have deployed or are piloting tokenized money instruments for treasury operations. The figure, published in October 2026, exceeds prior industry forecasts and marks a shift from exploratory interest to operation...
"The Stellar network has built the fourth-largest ecosystem for tokenized real-world assets, which speaks to the strength of its network and the growing institutional demand for tokenization." — Carlos Domingo, Co-Founder and CEO, Securitize
A DBS Bank survey of 422 corporate finance leaders across 11 countries found that 88% have deployed or are piloting tokenized money instruments for treasury operations. The figure, published in October 2026, exceeds prior industry forecasts and marks a shift from exploratory interest to operational integration. Stablecoins lead instrument preference at 63%, followed by tokenized deposits (53%) and tokenized money market funds (52%).
The survey data aligns with a cascade of infrastructure announcements in the final week of October 2026: Hanwha Investment & Securities adopted Chainlink's CCIP as the data and interoperability standard for its global tokenization platform; Securitize announced plans to add the Stellar network as its 17th supported blockchain for institutional asset issuance; and tokenized money market fund AUM crossed $5 billion, up from roughly $500 million at the start of 2024. Together, these developments suggest that corporate demand for on-chain financial instruments has moved from proof-of-concept to production-scale deployment across multiple geographies and asset classes.
Between June and July 2026, DBS Bank surveyed 422 financial executives and corporate treasurers from companies across 11 countries. The headline finding: 88% of respondents reported that their organizations are either deploying or piloting tokenized money for payments and liquidity management.
The breakdown of that 88% reveals important gradations:
The remaining 12% reported no current activity but indicated plans to evaluate tokenized instruments within the next 12 months.
These figures represent a notable acceleration from earlier surveys. A separate corporate survey conducted in early 2026 found that 13% of corporate respondents had already used stablecoins for payments or treasury operations, with 77% naming cross-border B2B settlement as their top reason for adoption. The DBS data, collected six months later, suggests the adoption curve steepened substantially during the first half of 2026.
DBS attributed the acceleration to three factors: regulatory clarity in key markets (the EU's MiCA framework, the U.S. GENIUS Act, and Singapore's own stablecoin licensing regime); the availability of institutional-grade custody and compliance infrastructure; and measurable cost savings on cross-border settlement, which the bank estimated at 0.5% to 2.5% on stablecoin rails versus 3% to 7% through correspondent banking.
The DBS survey asked respondents which tokenized money instruments they currently use or plan to adopt. The results:
| Instrument | Currently Using or Planning | |---|---| | Fiat-pegged stablecoins | 63% | | Tokenized deposits | 53% | | Tokenized money market funds | 52% |
Stablecoins dominate for a structural reason: they are available today on public blockchains, require no bank intermediary for settlement, and integrate with existing DeFi and payment infrastructure. Tokenized deposits — digital representations of bank deposits on blockchain rails — rank second, reflecting the growing number of bank-issued stablecoin and deposit token programs following the OCC's final rule implementing the GENIUS Act. The OCC rule, finalized in October 2026, opened the path for U.S. banks to issue stablecoins, with 21 institutions entering the queue.
The dominant corporate use cases cited by DBS respondents:
These use cases share a common characteristic: they involve friction points in existing banking infrastructure that tokenized instruments can address with 24/7 settlement, reduced intermediary layers, and programmable compliance logic.
The week of October 27–30, 2026, produced two significant infrastructure announcements that illustrate the supply-side response to corporate demand.
Hanwha Investment & Securities – Chainlink CCIP
On October 30, Hanwha Investment & Securities, a financial subsidiary of Hanwha Group (a Fortune Global 500 conglomerate based in South Korea), announced a strategic partnership with Chainlink. Hanwha adopted Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as the official data and interoperability infrastructure for its global tokenization platform.
Under the partnership, Chainlink provides trusted pricing data and net asset value (NAV) feeds for tokenized assets issued through the Hanwha platform, while CCIP enables secure movement of assets and liquidity between public and private blockchains. Hanwha disclosed that it is in discussions with global asset managers and issuers to tokenize and distribute a range of real-world asset products, targeting institutional investors and on-chain markets.
The Hanwha deal is notable because it places a major Korean financial institution's tokenization infrastructure on Chainlink's cross-chain standard — a signal that Asian institutional capital is converging on interoperability protocols rather than building proprietary systems.
Securitize – Stellar Network Integration
On October 28, Securitize (NYSE: SECZ) announced plans to integrate the Stellar network as its 17th supported blockchain for institutional tokenized asset issuance and management. Securitize currently supports Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and other networks.
The Stellar integration is strategically relevant because Stellar already hosts tokenized funds from Franklin Templeton and WisdomTree, and Curve Finance deployed its first non-EVM instance on Stellar in the same week. Stellar's positioning as a low-cost settlement layer for regulated financial instruments attracted $2.1 billion in tokenized real-world assets by mid-2026, making it the fourth-largest chain for RWA by value.
Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo cited the scale of Stellar's RWA ecosystem as the primary rationale for integration, indicating that platform decisions are now driven by where institutional assets already reside rather than by technical preferences alone.
The tokenized money market fund category provides the clearest quantitative measure of corporate and institutional demand for on-chain treasury instruments.
Combined tokenized money market AUM grew from roughly $500 million at the start of 2024 to over $5 billion by May 2026 — a 10x increase in 18 months. Within the broader tokenized RWA category, total AUM crossed $22 billion by May 2026, led by tokenized Treasuries ($10 billion) and private credit ($8 billion).
This growth trajectory has direct implications for the DBS survey findings. Tokenized money market funds function as on-chain cash equivalents — corporate treasurers can park idle cash in a BUIDL or BENJI token, earn short-term Treasury yields, and redeem at par. The 52% of DBS respondents citing tokenized money market funds as a current or planned instrument reflects this practical utility.
The Janus Henderson JQQQ fund, which placed the Nasdaq-100 on the Stellar network via a tokenized wrapper announced on October 29, 2026, extends this logic further: corporate treasurers and institutional allocators can now access equity-index exposure through the same on-chain infrastructure they use for cash management.
Transaction data from payment networks corroborates the survey findings. Stablecoin payment volume reached $482 billion in the first nine months of 2026, a 45% year-over-year increase. Transaction counts exceeded 1 billion, rising 71%. September 2026 set a monthly record at $72 billion.
B2B stablecoin payments specifically grew 733% year-on-year to an estimated $226 billion annualized, according to industry data. On-chain stablecoin card spending hit $3.9 billion — ten times the prior year — with 84% of growth driven by small transactions under $50, indicating retail adoption running in parallel with corporate treasury use.
Visa supports more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs worldwide, with settlement volumes exceeding $25 billion and growing at approximately 200% year-over-year. The payment network confirmed these figures in August 2026.
The volume data is consistent with the DBS finding that corporate adoption has moved beyond pilots. If 43% of the surveyed corporates are using tokenized money in specific divisions or regions, those divisions are generating real transaction flow — not test transactions on sandboxed networks.
The DBS survey headline requires careful qualification. An 88% adoption-or-pilot rate among 422 large-company finance leaders does not mean 88% of global corporates are using tokenized money. The survey sample skews toward large, internationally active companies with dedicated treasury functions — the segment most likely to encounter the cross-border friction that tokenized instruments address.
DBS itself flagged four obstacles that constrain broader adoption:
Regulatory uncertainty — While the EU (MiCA), the U.S. (GENIUS Act), and Singapore have advanced stablecoin frameworks, most jurisdictions lack clear rules for tokenized deposits and on-chain fund shares. Japan, Brazil, and India are at varying stages of regulatory development.
Information security risks — The Binance breach disclosed on October 29, 2026, with potential losses of $5.6 billion to $6.3 billion, underscores the operational risk environment. Corporate treasurers operating under fiduciary duties face heightened scrutiny when placing assets on blockchain infrastructure.
Specialist shortages — Integration of tokenized instruments with existing ERP and treasury management systems requires personnel who understand both blockchain architecture and corporate finance workflows. This talent pool remains thin.
Platform integration — 56% of corporates surveyed prefer stablecoin access via embedded API within existing treasury platforms, and 70% said they would adopt faster if stablecoins integrated with existing ERP systems. This signals that adoption is gated partly by middleware availability, not just demand.
Additionally, the 41% of corporate stablecoin users reporting savings of at least 10% on cross-border B2B payments suggests that cost savings, while real, are not universal and depend heavily on corridor, currency pair, and transaction size.
The DBS survey data, when cross-referenced with tokenized fund AUM growth, stablecoin payment volumes, and the cadence of infrastructure partnerships, supports a consistent conclusion: corporate treasury adoption of tokenized money has moved from exploration to operational deployment at a rate that outpaces earlier projections. The 88% adoption-or-pilot figure — even with its large-company sampling bias — represents a structural demand signal that infrastructure providers and blockchain networks are now racing to serve.
The economic logic is straightforward. Corporates with subsidiaries across multiple jurisdictions spend 3% to 7% of cross-border transaction value on correspondent banking fees, face T+1 or T+2 settlement delays, and cannot move cash outside banking hours. Tokenized instruments — stablecoins, deposit tokens, and on-chain money market funds — reduce those costs, compress settlement to near-real-time, and operate 24/7. The DBS data suggests that the number of corporates acting on this logic has reached critical mass.
What remains uncertain is the timeline for the remaining 12% of surveyed corporates and for the far larger population of mid-market firms not captured in the DBS sample. Regulatory fragmentation, cybersecurity concerns, and integration complexity will determine whether the adoption curve flattens or steepens through 2027. The infrastructure, however, is now in place. The question has shifted from "will corporates adopt tokenized money" to "how fast."