Standard Chartered: Building Tokenisation Infrastructure

The conversation around tokenisation and stablecoins has taken a big shift in the past year. What was once theoretical discussion at many organisations is now implementation planning, according to Jennifer Lassiter, Managing Director and Head of Digital Assets, Americas and Europe at Standard Chartered.

The international banking group has been operating in the digital assets space for over a decade, but 2025 marks a turning point in Standard Chartered's client demand.

Jennifer Lassiter says clients are moving “from experimentation to implementation, or at a minimum asking how to start thinking about implementation”. This shift reflects broader regulatory progress, particularly US legislative movement throughout 2025 in the shape of the GENIUS Act.

Yet Standard Chartered's footprint spans markets that moved on digital assets regulation well before American lawmakers. The bank operates across Asia, the Middle East and Europe, regions where stablecoin and digital asset frameworks already exist.

This global reach provides unique insight into where corporate demand is genuine versus aspirational. Rather than speculative curiosity, Jennifer has observed specific operational challenges driving real client interest.

Trapped liquidity in cross-border operations stands out as a primary concern. Moving funds between national operations and regional centres currently takes days using traditional infrastructure.

Jennifer explains that tokenised liquidity and stablecoin settlements can potentially reduce this to “hours or minutes”. Standard Chartered is currently piloting these flows in corridors between Hong Kong and Singapore using real corporate transactions.

Beyond speed, corporate treasurers are seeking certainty over volatility. They want to use stablecoins or tokenised deposits for working capital efficiency, not speculation.

“They want same day settlement, lower post-trade costs and clearer foreign exchange,” Jennifer says. This demand is particularly acute in markets where legacy payment rails are slow, expensive or non-existent.

Yet perhaps the most significant shift in thinking centres on how blockchain fits into existing operations. Jennifer says this comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding some observers have about blockchain adoption in banking.

Replacing infrastructure, not replacing banks

“It's not necessarily replacing a bank,” Jennifer explains. “It's about taking traditional financial products and putting them either on chain or utilising tokenisation so they're moving faster, more efficiently.”

The technology updates infrastructure and plumbing rather than creating entirely new asset classes. This distinction matters enormously to risk-conscious corporate treasurers and chief financial officers who want blockchain benefits without abandoning regulatory protection.

Traditional financial products delivered through faster settlement infrastructure appeals to corporates far more than exposure to volatile cryptocurrencies. 

This explains why Standard Chartered positions itself to serve multiple client types across the ecosystem, from stablecoin issuers seeking traditional banking services to corporates using tokenisation for trapped liquidity or foreign exchange settlement.

Jennifer stresses that fintechs, banks and crypto providers all need seats at the table. “There's no world where we've built a system that fully realises the benefits if it's just banks or just fintechs or just crypto companies,” she says.

The collaborative approach Jennifer alludes to reflects a shift from the competitiveness that once defined widely relationships between traditional banks and fintech startups. The bank has historically connected emerging markets to the global economy, building agility and adaptation into its operations to achieve this.

“Our strategy has always been to ask where is the market need? Where is it commercially viable to play? And how can we provide institutional grade capabilities?" she says.

What institutional grade infrastructure actually means

The term “institutional grade” gets used frequently in digital assets discussions. But Jennifer distinguishes clearly between retail crypto trading and what banks must provide corporate clients.

Institutional grade infrastructure creates what she calls “a traditional capital markets feel”. The critical difference is faster settlement and greater transparency over where money is and when it moves.

For Jennifer, this requires regulated custody with segregated client assets, as mandated by the GENIUS Act requirements for stablecoin issuers in the US. It includes trading and settlement infrastructure integrated with existing foreign exchange, securities and treasury workflows.

Crucially, tokenised deposits and money market funds must settle instantly whilst maintaining regulatory protection. Anti-money laundering, counter-financing of terrorism, travel rule compliance and transaction monitoring all continue with identical bank standards.

Perhaps most importantly, institutional infrastructure requires interoperability. Global financial transformation historically takes considerable time, meaning traditional and tokenised infrastructure will coexist for years.

“All of that infrastructure needs to be able to connect and be interoperable with each other,” Jennifer explains. Standard Chartered focuses heavily on enabling these connections cross-border as markets determine which rails will carry most future volume.

Jennifer considers interoperability the hardest technical challenge but also the most critical for building something genuinely better than current systems. This represents a major operational hurdle faced by the world's largest financial institutions.

Banks must integrate new blockchain rails with decades of existing systems, global regulatory requirements and established client workflows. This complexity distinguishes bank-built infrastructure from crypto-native solutions that can start fresh without legacy considerations.

Building trust through supervision and compliance

The common theme across all corporate adoption considerations comes down to trust, according to Jennifer. She says corporate clients will adopt digital assets at scale “when the infrastructure is safe and regulated, just like traditional banking”.

Standard Chartered brings supervision, global client reach, balance sheet strength and institutional trust to tokenisation infrastructure. These components enable scaling to commercially viable levels.

Part of this approach to trust is building regulated settlement networks. Today, Standard Chartered is deploying tokenised bank deposits in Asian corridors while offering custody and settlement services from the Middle East. Its investments in ventures including Zodia Markets, Zodia Custody and Libeara provide additional capabilities.

These ventures often operate slightly ahead of the main bank, providing learning experiences. Zodia Markets and Zodia Custody deliver crypto trading and custody functions, while Libeara focuses specifically on tokenisation.

What’s more, embedding digital assets into traditional treasury and foreign exchange infrastructure matters just as much, as many multinational organisations explicitly do not want separate crypto systems.

“Multinationals want blockchain benefits inside their existing workflows,” Jennifer says. This includes hedge programmes, treasury dashboards and cash pooling structures receiving bank grade access to digital asset capabilities.

In addition, by making compliance and reporting stronger rather than weaker addresses a persistent myth that blockchain enables anonymous or secretive transactions. “Digital assets make it easier to trace funds, verify counterparties, and reduce settlement risk because of that transparency” Jennifer explains.

As such, combining blockchain transparency with anti-money laundering, know-your-customer requirements and sanctions screening gives corporates “the speed of crypto with the safety of banking”. For Jennifer and Standard Chartered, this combination proves essential for winning corporate trust.

Regional momentum and regulatory catalysts

Standard Chartered announced several public initiatives throughout 2025, enabled by existing regulation in markets outside the US. The Middle East established frameworks through the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in Dubai, whilst the European Union implemented MiCA, the first comprehensive digital asset regulatory framework.

Hong Kong and Singapore, both highly active markets for Standard Chartered, established stablecoin-specific frameworks and broader digital asset regulation. These regulatory advances enabled the bank to announce pilots with Siemens AG and live transfer of funds from Hong Kong to Singapore using tokenisation.

In August 2025, Standard Chartered launched crypto trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum on its foreign exchange platform from London. The bank now offers custody services in the Middle East and Hong Kong, with Luxembourg following in spring 2026.

Jennifer says everything the bank does responds to client demand. She feels particularly excited about expansion across the global network, especially into the US following fresh regulatory clarity in 2025.

“I personally feel very excited around what next year is going to bring,” she says. “That will be the final puzzle piece into the global network and our ability to serve our clients globally.”

Timeline for scaled adoption

Jennifer expects finalised rulemaking from the GENIUS Act and hopefully the Clarity Act by end of 2026. This will unleash “lightning speed” deployment of infrastructure currently being built whilst waiting for final rules.

The GENIUS Act in particular shares three quarters similarity with Europe's MiCA framework, a convergence Jennifer considers highly positive, showing regulators learning from each iteration.

Partners in the Middle East, Asia and United Kingdom are now examining US regulation to identify elements relevant for domestic needs and international harmonisation.

“The goal is to create a faster, more efficient, commercially viable system that clients engage with seamlessly,” Jennifer says. “That's a more robust, regulated, secure way to move stores of value.”

She concludes that flexibility around stablecoins will be essential moving forward. Unknown use cases and applications will emerge as banks work with clients and market infrastructure develops. Therefore, regulation must accommodate these future applications while maintaining the trust that corporates require.

She says: “Making sure stakeholders have a seat at the table and building flexibility into the system are the two most critical ingredients for the success of stablecoin adoption.”