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.  

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From Left to Right: Sabih Behzad, Head of Digital Assets & Currencies Transformation for Deutsche Bank, Chintan Shah, Head of Corporate Coverage for APAC & MEA at Deutsche Bank, Kriti Jain, Head of New Economy Coverage APAC and Head of New Economy Cash Solutions Sales APAC & MEA at Deutsche Bank, Leiming Chen, Chief Sustainability Officer at Ant International, Yi Zhou, Chief Financial Officer at Ant International, Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International and Yanyi Liang, Head of Whale Treasury Platform at Ant International

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 deliver seamless and secure payment solutions to Ant International and its customers in Europe and Asia. Given the dynamic landscape of financial services, we see great potential 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.  

About Deutsche Bank  

Deutsche Bank provides retail and private banking, corporate and transaction banking, lending, asset and wealth management products and services as well as focused investment banking to private individuals, small and medium-sized companies, corporations, governments and institutional investors. Deutsche Bank is the leading bank in Germany with strong European roots and a global network.  

About Ant International  

With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider. Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, our unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions. To learn more, please visit https://www.ant-intl.com/  

About Antom  

Ant International's Antom is the leading payment and digitisation services provider for merchants around the world. It offers unified merchant payment solutions to serve businesses of all sizes. Antom supports merchants to integrate over 300 payment methods, enabling them to connect with consumers in more than 200 markets, with the flexibility to accept payments in more than 100 currencies. Beyond payments, it provides digital marketing solutions and merchant digitisation services to help merchant streamline operations and enhance customer engagement. To learn more, please visit https://www.antom.com/.  

About WorldFirst  

WorldFirst offers cross-border payments and treasury services through its global business account, empowering growth for SMEs in e-commerce, trade, and the broad platform economy. WorldFirst simplifies key financial operations, including international payments, collections, currency conversions, and treasury management, all in a one-stop account. Leveraging the technological strengths of its parent company Ant International, WorldFirst delivers industry-leading transaction security and reliability. WorldFirst has supported over one million customers, enabling payments in 100+ currencies across more than 200 countries and regions. Learn more about WorldFirst at https://www.worldfirst.com.  

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