Ant International and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC, 三井住友银行) signed a memorandum of understanding on October 26 to work on cross-border payments tied to Japan, Singapore and Southeast Asia, covering Ant’s Alipay+, Antom and WorldFirst businesses.
SMBC will use the transaction banking services it runs in several markets to support the three units: Alipay+, the gateway that links overseas wallets with merchants; Antom, which handles payment acceptance for merchants; and WorldFirst (万里汇), which provides global accounts for cross-border traders. The bank will also help Ant International with its own cross-border payments and treasury. The two sides will explore linking Whale RTP, Ant’s blockchain-based real-time treasury platform, with SMBC’s digital payment and digital asset services, so that money moves between Ant’s group entities with greater efficiency and transparency.
Neither side disclosed products or launch dates. Zfzj Cross-border Payments noted that Ant’s Whale RTP work with other banks is further along. This month Ant and HSBC ran a pilot using HSBC tokenised deposits for dirham transfers inside the UAE and US dollar transfers from the UAE to markets including Hong Kong and Singapore, and OCBC launched a tokenised deposit product with Ant for group treasury between Singapore and Malaysia.
Why it matters: Ant International relies on local banks in each market to hold client money, settle payments and move liquidity, so its bank partners set how far its payment and account products can reach. SMBC is the third large bank this month to work with Ant on Whale RTP after HSBC and OCBC, which shows Ant building its group treasury on bank tokenised deposits. The SMBC deal is still a memorandum, and the test is whether a live transaction follows, as it did with HSBC.
Sources: 支付之家·跨境支付网 Zfzj Cross-border Payments, October 27, 2026 (Chinese-language source, translated); Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation news release, October 26, 2026
Image: Akonnchiroll, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
