From left are Cheng Wen, head of Citi (Taiwan) Financial Services Group, Zhang Shengxin, president of Citi Taiwan and chairman of Citi (Taiwan) Bank, Feng Shuyi, general manager of Citi (Taiwan) Bank and head of the Financial Markets Group, and Wang Xiaoqi, head of the financial institutions business of Citi (Taiwan) Financial Services Group.
Citigroup has been actively promoting digital asset innovation and modernizing payment infrastructure in recent years. In addition to launching "Citi Token Services" to achieve near-instant liquidity transfers year-round, it has also established a partnership with Coinbase, a world-renowned cryptocurrency exchange, to strengthen the further integration of traditional finance and decentralized finance.
Chang Shengxin, President of Citi Taiwan and Chairman of Citi (Taiwan) Bank, said that with the extension of securities market trading hours, shortening of delivery schedules, application of digital technology and the rise of securities tokenization, the capital market is reshaping operating rules and ecological structure at an unprecedented speed.
She pointed out that the U.S. capital market is moving towards the development direction of longer trading hours. Major stock exchanges have actively promoted extended trading mechanisms (Extended Hours Trading) in recent years and are expected to support longer trading hours, real-time settlement and tokenized securities trading platform structures in the future. This reflects that the global financial market is moving towards a more real-time, more digital and more transformative development direction.
Cheng Wen, head of Citi (Taiwan)'s financial services business group, said that as a private permissioned blockchain, Citi's tokenization service has been officially launched in 7 major markets around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. It mainly supports the flow of funds in US dollars and euros, and plans to continue to expand to more markets and currencies in the future.
She pointed out that as institutional customer adoption has steadily increased, hundreds of customers are now completing approximately $1 billion in fund transfers through tokenized deposits every day. For the Taiwan market, local customers can use this solution as long as they have a Citi account in the above-mentioned seven online markets, which greatly improves the efficiency of cross-border operations and capital allocation.
In terms of strengthening the bridge between traditional and digital finance, Cheng Wen also mentioned that the cooperation between Citigroup and Coinbase focuses on supporting large-scale incoming and outgoing cash flow operations and integrating the digital asset platform with the global regulated financial system. Coinbase has selected Citi’s Virtual Account Wallet solution as the core support for its Banking as a Service (BaaS) capabilities. This mechanism not only allows Coinbase's payment customers to have fund reception, holding and payment functions similar to traditional bank accounts, but also automatically converts incoming legal currency into stable coins, providing a robust financial channel.
At the same time, in order to respond to the payment collection needs of corporate customers, Citi uses its integrated payment acceptance platform Spring by Citi to help institutional customers directly accept stablecoin payments during the checkout process. The stable currency collection function is technically supported by Coinbase Payments. The system will automatically convert digital currency into legal currency, and Citi will complete the fund settlement.
