Ant International and KBank to leverage JPMorgan Kinexys Digital Payments for cross-border payment

Ant International and Thailand's KBank to leverage JPMorgan Kinexys Digital Payments for cross-border payment solution.

According to the firms, Ant International and KBank will leverage Kinexys Digital Payments to move USD liquidity on a near real-time, 24/7 basis and build integrated payment infrastructure in Thailand.

➡️ Why this matters

The global cross-border payment is a complex and fragmented network of rails.

Moving money internationally often requires transactions to pass through multiple correspondent banks, payment systems, and settlement windows, creating delays, operational complexity, and trapped liquidity.

While tokenized deposits have yet to achieve atomic payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement across jurisdictions, they can already deliver meaningful efficiency gains when embedded into existing payment workflows.

This partnership demonstrates exactly that.

➡️ Integration, not disruption

Rather than replacing existing banking infrastructure, Kinexys Digital Payments is being integrated into a broader payment ecosystem. Ant International can move USD liquidity 24/7 using tokenized deposits, while KBank handles local currency conversion and local payment execution for its merchants and PSPs in Thailand.

In a previous pilot, cross-border transaction processing times between Thailand and international markets were reduced from as long as 72 hours to approximately five minutes.

In the preivous pilot, cross-border transaction time in and out of Thailand fell from as long as 72 hours via an existing remittance rail to approximately five minutes

More broadly, this highlights why tokenized bank deposits are emerging as a leading model for high-value corporate payments.

Unlike stablecoins, banks already possess the client relationships, regulatory frameworks, liquidity pools, and treasury infrastructure required by multinational corporates. The challenge is increasingly becoming one of interoperability and ecosystem integration rather than trust or distribution.

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