Deutsche Bank and Ant International Announce Strategic Partnership to Provide Integrated Cross-Border Payment Solutions to Global Merchants

Deutsche Bank and Ant International have announced their strategic partnership to provide  more comprehensive payment solutions for businesses of all sizes in Europe and Asia, by  combining their expertise and leveraging Ant International’s proprietary tokenisation and  AI-based FX technology.  

The bank will collaborate with Ant International’s Embedded Finance unit on a series of  global treasury management and cross-border payment innovations, including tokenised  deposits, stablecoin, and its Time-Series Transformer (TST) FX Model.  

Deutsche Bank will be the first German bank to facilitate Ant International’s blockchain based real-time treasury management platform to enable real-time fund transfers between  Ant International’s intragroup entities. This will enable more efficient and transparent  global treasury management for Ant.  

In addition, the two sides will also explore cross-border payment innovations, including  tokenised bank deposits, stablecoin and Ant International’s Falcon TST FX Model, to help  Ant International and its clients reduce FX-related cost and risks. Both companies will also  further look into the applications of stablecoins for global payments, including real-time  cross-border treasury management for Ant’s entities, reserve management and on-ramp  and off-ramp services.  

Deutsche Bank will also work with Antom, a merchant payment and digitisation services  provider, to scale up their collaboration to extend Antom’s acquiring solutions for  merchants in EMEA, enabling them to be seamlessly integrated with more payment  solutions.  

The bank will also support WorldFirst’s suite of payments-related solutions for SMEs in e commerce and cross-border trade, including but not limited to account collections,  payments and FX services. It will also enable the account and financial service provider to  access its global network to serve its clients.  

Ole Matthiessen, Head of Corporate Bank APAC & MEA and Global Head of Cash  Management for Deutsche Bank said: “We are delighted to strategically cooperate with Ant  International. We will leverage our broad product capabilities and strong global network to collaborate with Ant International, as one of the world’s leading financial technology  providers, to develop innovative payment solutions and transform the future of treasury  management.”  

Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, said: “With a dynamic  fintech landscape, Europe is fast-becoming a key hub for global digital payment innovation.  We are pleased to deepen our commitment to the region through this collaboration with  Deutsche Bank, supporting the development of more seamless, secure and inclusive cross  border payment solutions. By combining our digital and payment capabilities with a global  leading financial institution, we aim to deliver enhanced payment experiences that meet  the evolving needs of global businesses and consumers.”  

Expanding on a client relationship that has been in place since 2019, the two sides signed  a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on June 8 in Munich, Germany to deepen the  strategic collaboration.