Tokenized Money: Understand and Act

By Alenka Grealish, Principal Analyst, Celent In the short span of a year, stablecoins have rocketed towards the top of bankers’ minds. Regulatory clarity has been the primary rocket booster, followed by technological breakthroughs. Naturally, bankers’ attention to alternatives such as tokenized deposits and deposit tokens has also spiked. Understand Understanding the overall implications of tokenized money can be challenging amid the hype and hyperbole. The first step is to distinguish between stablecoins, tokenized deposits and deposit tokens. The second is to keep in mind that tokenized money is not only a substitute for payments and fund transfers, but it also offers a new value proposition: programmability. With bearer instruments, ownership is conveyed by possession, and in the case of stablecoins, possession of the private key. The term pseudo-bearer instrument applies to select issuers (such as Circle Internet Group and Paxos), which require redemption by a verified customer to minimize use for illegal or illicit activities. For example, Circle retains the ability to blacklist and freeze specific addresses in its smart contracts. Programmability is the ability to automate, customize and execute transactions through software and code. A smart contract executes automatically based on predefined rules, triggers and/or conditions encoded in its programming. Smart contracts can govern how payments are initiated, processed and completed. Leading use cases for programmability include conditional funds transfer, intra-day lending, conditional supplier payments, supply-chain financing and trade settlements. Stablecoins have been the darling of hype. Celent’s analysis, however, has found that the trillions in stablecoin-transaction value have boiled down to billions in real-world payments and fund transfers. Of the estimated $50-trillion annual value, 1 percent, or around $0.110 trillion, has supported payments and fund transfers. In contrast to the broad spotlight on stablecoins, attention to tokenized deposits and deposit tokens has been concentrated in global-transaction banking circles and Sibos conversations. Nascent in the real-world economy. While most banks do not need to sprint towards a product launch, they do need to understand the opportunities and threats to their current and future businesses—in particular, cross-border payments, treasury services, trade finance and merchant acquiring. To help banks determine urgency levels, Celent has categorized use cases by adoption stage. Based on three underlying drivers—value to customers, feasibility (technological and regulatory) and economic viability, which depends upon scaling—it has established four categories: - Weak—value not yet proven; - Developing—value proven, but feasibility being tested; - Early scaling—feasibility proven, and providers are onboarding corporate clients; - Scaling underway—providers are handling hundreds of millions in daily transactions related to payments and/or fund transfers. To provide granular insights into adoption, Celent categorizes use cases by the types of countries in which a corporation is active (for example, has trading partners, customers and/or bank accounts). The cross-border payment is an oft-cited use case. Adoption stage, however, ranges from weak (e.g., B2B [business-to-business] payments between corporations in G10 countries) to early scaling (e.g., B2B payments involving at least one corporation in a country with high inflation). As shown above, payments and treasury-services use cases tend to be nascent, but a few are beginning to scale. Stablecoin payments are relatively less mature than tokenized deposits and deposit tokens. JPMorgan Chase and Citi have led the charge in developing tokenized deposits, with their initiatives initially concentrated in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong but now expanding to the eurozone and the United Kingdom. DBS Bank and HSBC recently launched tokenized-deposit services. JPMorgan was the first mover in launching a deposit token, JPM Coin (ticker symbol JPMD), which is already demonstrating interoperability. Celent has observed growing demand for treasury-related use cases, particularly from firms in specific sectors and those that are forward-thinking. Due to their global footprints and payment flows, certain sectors are finding the value proposition relatively stronger, including payment service providers (PSPs), remittance players, gig-economy companies and digital-asset-native companies. Treasury teams overall should have a long-term interest. They are operating under persistent economic uncertainty and mounting pressure to do more with less. As a result, they are being forced to evolve into technologists to accelerate the migration from paper-based processes to digital platforms and, increasingly, to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI–driven automation. The ultimate goal is self-driving treasury management. In the near term, tokenized money could play a key role in improving liquidity optimization, real-time cash visibility and enhanced intraday mobility. Several multinational corporations (such as Siemens and Ant International) have already shared their ambitions in public. In the quest for self-driving treasury, programmable payments—natively embedded within treasury workflows and enterprise systems—could become a critical capability, enabling conditional execution, straight-through processing and autonomous financial operations. Payment fintech (financial technology) competitors are out of the stablecoin gates. Although stablecoin payments are relatively immature, a diverse group of non-bank competitors is vying to become leaders in this space. Overall, these competitors are targeting point-of-sale (POS) transactions, merchant-acquirer payouts, payroll and payouts, and remittances. Their go-to-market strategies vary from precise (e.g., targeting high-inflation countries) to broad (e.g., POS transactions worldwide). It’s no surprise that those in the vanguard include global payment service providers (such as Stripe and PayPal), remittance players (such as MoneyGram and Remitly), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and treasury management system (TMS) providers, and digital-asset-native companies (such as Coinbase). ERP and TMS providers are developing stablecoin offerings. Transaction bankers should be monitoring their moves. SAP stands out for investing in and launching its SAP Digital Currency Hub, which enables stablecoin B2B payments and treasury-fund transfers. Kyriba, a leading TMS provider, recently partnered with Fipto (Paris, France), a global stablecoin-infrastructure provider. Via Kyriba Marketplace, TMS clients can access Fipto’s stablecoin-payment infrastructure and view fiat and stablecoin positions in a single Kyriba dashboard. In November 2025, Trovata launched CORP$, a stablecoin service, in partnership with Paxos, a US-regulated stablecoin-infrastructure provider. It is sending strong signals about its expansion plans into next-generation treasury. Ripple, a veteran crypto- and stablecoin-infrastructure provider (founded in 2012), made the bold move to buy rather than build or partner, acquiring GTreasury in late 2025. The GTreasury acquisition is one initiative to bridge Ripple’s offerings to the enterprise, including scaling the use of its stablecoin, RLUSD. Act The question banks must now address is what their path forward should be. The answer will depend on the levels of importance of specific businesses and segments. It is clear that tokenized money has a credible value proposition and has proven its feasibility. Banks can harness tokenized money to grow specific businesses and launch new ones. The question banks must now address is what their path forward should be. The answer will depend on the levels of importance of specific businesses and segments. Celent recommends that banks evaluate the importance of the following businesses and assign them to three levels: high (critical to the bank’s growth), moderate and low (not core to the bank’s growth strategy). - Treasury services for clients with more than 15 overseas accounts or banking relationships, - Treasury services for financial institutions, fintechs and PSPs, - Treasury services for gig-economy companies and e-commerce platforms, - Cross-border B2B payments, - FX (foreign exchange) services, - Trade finance, - Global merchant acquiring, - Remittances. Depending on the answer, banks should: Low → Play Defense: Track tokenized money initiatives by both your direct and indirect competitors (e.g., PSPs and ERP vendors), and determine how to monitor the business impacts of these initiatives and identify trigger points to act. Moderate → Be Adaptive: Survey your customers regarding their interest in services powered by tokenized money and assess the potential to grow select businesses via tokenized-money services; prioritize customer segments and services and develop a pilot to test economic viability over the next 24 months; be prepared with a business case to move from pilot to production; and begin discussions with leading infrastructure providers to keep up with developments. High → Play Offense: Survey customers and evaluate the strongest value propositions and the best entry product: stablecoin, deposit token or tokenized deposit; build a multi-disciplinary team to manage compliance, security and controls, integration, product development and marketing; develop a product roadmap for launch within 24 months; determine optimal build (e.g., issue own stablecoin) or buy decision and begin vetting infrastructure partners; and examine consortium options, if any are available. A competitive race is now underway to determine who will lead in delivering tokenized-money services—banks, PSPs, digital-asset-native players, ERP or TMS vendors. The next five years will bring a rigorous period of proving economic viability. The winners will be those that realize network effects and scale. Similar to other payment businesses, industry concentration will be relatively high. For example, only a few banks will find it viable to issue their own stablecoins. The alternative, a consortium model, is feasible but requires overcoming inherent challenges, such as ownership structure, investment requirements, governance and go-to-market. These challenges have caused the demise of past consortia—for example, trade-finance blockchain consortia. As a result, Celent expects that the majority of banks that play offense will pursue tokenized deposits and deposit tokens. They, too, will face challenges, such as achieving interoperability and gaining regulatory approval across jurisdictions. Nevertheless, they have strong motivation: If a mere 1 percent of cross-border payments migrate to tokenized money, around $2 trillion in transaction value is up for grabs.