The $2 Trillion Question: Who Gets to Print Digital Money?

Singapore, Oct. 28 — Tokenised money is moving from experiment to treasury toolkit among the world’s largest corporates, according to a DBS survey published alongside its report The Great Rewiring: Money in a New Order. Reuters and the Straits Times carried the findings on Wednesday.

88 percent of respondents — not the rounded “nine in ten” of some headlines — said their organisations were already deploying or piloting tokenised money use cases. The poll covered 422 business and finance leaders at companies with more than US$500 million in annual revenue across 11 markets, conducted between mid-June and mid-July 2026. Roughly two-thirds said they had either deployed at scale or begun use in selected locations.

Interest, Pilot, and Scale Are Different Animals

The survey is a treasury attitudes instrument. It does not measure on-chain settlement share, fee pools captured by issuers, or deposit flight from regulated banks. Culled treats the 88% figure as directional evidence that large firms are building optionality — not as proof that tokenised liabilities have displaced conventional accounts.

Instrument mix still tells you where CFOs start. Stablecoins led at 63% adoption or planned use, followed by tokenised deposits at 53% and tokenised money-market funds at 52%, according to DBS’s release. Lim Soon Chong, group head of global transaction services, told Reuters stablecoins offer fungibility across payment intermediaries beyond banks and lighter permissioning for cross-border flows — advantages that matter when Treasury bill supply and money-market plumbing already stress short-term liquidity management.

Expected benefits within two years included real-time cross-border payments (71% of respondents), stronger internal controls (66%), and liquidity optimisation (65%). Seventy-eight percent said they were diversifying settlement currencies as trade corridors fragment; Southeast Asia ranked as the top expansion destination in the same report.

Who Prints, Who Holds, Who Earns Float

The headline’s “$2 trillion question” is not cryptocurrency marketing. It is corporate cash architecture: when treasuries can move tokenised liabilities continuously, fee and float economics shift among banks, stablecoin issuers, custodians, and cloud payment networks. Tokenised deposits imply bank-issued digital liabilities on new rails; stablecoins often imply non-bank issuance with bank on- and off-ramps — different balance-sheet and regulatory footprints.

DBS itself is not a neutral observer; it sells transaction banking and tokenisation services. Finance leaders nonetheless cited real integration barriers: regulatory and compliance uncertainty, data security, and limited internal expertise — the same friction that keeps private credit and booking rules entangled with supervisors even when markets demand speed.

More than half of respondents in Australia and the UK said they were considering renminbi settlement over the next one to two years, a corridor story that intersects tokenisation only if new rails reduce FX and cutoff friction.

Pilot share above 80% is a signal that platform standards and issuer trust are becoming binding constraints — not that every multinational has rewritten its chart of accounts.

What Would Change the Verdict

Published payment volume through tokenised instruments by sector — not survey intent — would show whether pilots graduate to payroll and supplier dominance. Regulatory clarity on reserve assets, redemption, and AML for tokenised deposits in major markets would determine whether banks or non-bank issuers capture margin. A major corporate failure tied to stablecoin treasury parking would test whether the 88% figure survives contact with risk committees.

For now, DBS’s survey marks a treasury inflection narrative: large firms are wiring tokenised money into liquidity playbooks faster than public markets assumed, with stablecoins as the wedge — and banks still positioned as the partners finance leaders say they need to integrate the stack.