OCBC is the second-largest of the three Singapore local banks by assets and the most measured of the three on tokenisation, with focused Project Guardian participation (FX in particular) and a more conservative posture on direct digital-asset offerings than DBS. The bank has not stood up a separately licensed digital-asset trading venue and has not, in raw entries surfaced to date, publicly issued tokenised securities under its own balance sheet at the cadence DBS has. The franchise's tokenisation gravity sits in trade finance and corporate banking, where OCBC's regional ASEAN-and-Greater-China footprint produces the corridor flows that tokenisation work needs to be useful against. For a tokenisation operator, OCBC is the Singapore bank that has been most disciplined about staying inside the banking licence rather than building a separate CMS-licensed perimeter, and the one whose tokenisation work is most concentrated at the wholesale-banking and trade-finance layer.
Tokenisation positioning
Two design choices distinguish the bank's posture. First, OCBC has kept its tokenisation activity inside the existing banking licence, without spinning up a CMS-licensed digital-asset venue analogous to DBS's DDEx. OCBC's tokenised-securities exposure, where it exists, is a banking-product exposure (institutional buy-side or treasury holding) rather than a venue-operator exposure. Second, Project Guardian participation has been narrower in named scope than DBS's, with the FX workstream the most consistent area alongside selective fixed-income and asset-management touchpoints. The strategic read is that OCBC has prioritised proving out tokenised cash and tokenised trade-finance economics inside its existing wholesale-banking franchise before broadening to direct digital-asset principal activity.
The regional footprint shapes the use cases. Home-market dominance in Singapore is supplemented by significant subsidiaries in Indonesia (OCBC NISP), Malaysia (OCBC Malaysia), Hong Kong, and a presence in mainland China. The trade-finance and corporate-banking corridors connecting those markets are where tokenised cash, programmable payment release, and tokenised commercial-paper economics actually show up. This is where the franchise's natural tokenisation gravity sits, alongside tokenised-fund distribution through the Bank of Singapore private-banking subsidiary.
Named products and pilots
- Project Guardian participation. OCBC has appeared on the named-participants list, with the FX track the most consistent area. The FX workstream is where the purpose-bound money construction has been most operational, and OCBC has been a recurring named bank counterparty in that work alongside other Singapore banks and global counterparties. The workstream-by-workstream mandate is not in current raw entries.
- Tokenised commercial paper and tokenised bonds. OCBC has appeared in published references to tokenised debt-instrument work, both as an issuer of selected tokenised products and as a buy-side participant. Specific issuance volumes and counterparty maps are not in current raw entries.
- Trade-finance digitisation. OCBC has participated in trade-finance digitisation consortia (the Komgo network and related arrangements have appeared in earlier coverage), which is the layer that the Guardian trade-finance workstream needs to integrate with. The current scope is not consolidated in current raw entries.
- Project Ensemble participation. OCBC has appeared in the participating-banks set for the HKMA wholesale CBDC and tokenisation sandbox via its Hong Kong subsidiary. The specific workstreams are not in current raw entries.
- Bank of Singapore tokenised-product distribution. The private-banking subsidiary has been a distribution channel for tokenised funds and tokenised structured products to HNW and UHNW clients. The product roster is not in current raw entries.
Institutional partnerships
OCBC's tokenisation partnerships sit principally with regional and global asset managers running tokenised funds (where the bank's role is distribution, not issuance), with trade-finance consortia (where the bank's role is bank participation, with several banks settling underlying flows on shared infrastructure), and with custody partners on the digital-asset side. The bank has not, as of late 2025, been named as a founding shareholder of a multi-bank tokenised settlement network analogous to Partior; its cross-bank tokenised-cash exposure is therefore as a non-shareholder participant or as a counterparty rather than as a co-owner of the settlement layer.
The Bank of Singapore subsidiary maintains its own institutional partnerships on the wealth side, particularly around tokenised funds being distributed to private-bank clients. Those partnerships span both Singapore-domiciled wrappers (VCC and unit-trust structures) and global asset managers' tokenised products under the various jurisdictional regimes covered in Tokenisation, defined and Stablecoin types.
Regulatory perimeter
OCBC's home prudential supervisor is the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The bank operates as a locally incorporated bank in Singapore, as OCBC Bank (Hong Kong) supervised by HKMA, as OCBC NISP in Indonesia, as OCBC Malaysia in Malaysia, and as a smaller presence in mainland China. The Bank of Singapore is a wholly owned private-banking subsidiary with its own regulated wrapper.
Tokenisation activity sits within the existing banking-licence perimeter rather than under a separate CMS or Major Payment Institution structure. The structural implication is that OCBC's tokenised-cash and tokenised-instrument activity goes through the same prudential and conduct framework as the rest of the wholesale and corporate-banking franchise. The bank has not, in raw entries surfaced to date, applied for a MAS-regulated SCS licence or stood up a stablecoin issuance perimeter; if that changes, it would be a step-change in posture rather than a continuation of current strategy.
For prudential capital purposes, OCBC's tokenised exposures sit under basel sco60 cryptoasset standard, with the targeted SCO60 review endorsed by GHOS in March 2026 (see Basel Committee) the most relevant ongoing Basel-side process. The franchise's exposure appears concentrated in Group 1a (tokenised traditional assets), so the SCO60 review's Group 1 treatment is the load-bearing piece.
Recent activity
- OCBC has continued to appear as a named participant in Project Guardian FX work as of late 2025; the consolidated participation map is not in current raw entries.
- The bank has continued to participate in trade-finance digitisation consortia as of late 2025; the current corridor and counterparty roster is not in current raw entries.
- OCBC's posture on direct digital-asset principal activity has remained more conservative than DBS's as of late 2025; whether the bank intends to stand up a separately licensed digital-asset venue is not in current raw entries.
Open questions
- The detailed mandate of OCBC's Project Guardian FX workstream participation: which specific pilots, which counterparties, what currencies, and whether the bank tokenises its own SGD or USD deposit liabilities for the work or settles via a partner bank.
- Whether OCBC has issued tokenised bonds or tokenised commercial paper under its own balance sheet, and if so the outstanding programme size, distribution channels, and ledger venue.
- Bank of Singapore's tokenised-fund distribution roster: which managers, which wrappers, which jurisdictions of fund domicile.
- Whether OCBC has a position on the SCS framework beyond participation in Guardian FX work, and whether the bank intends to apply for a Major Payment Institution licence to issue a SGD or USD-pegged SCS.
- The bank's posture on multi-bank tokenised cash networks: whether OCBC is a participant on Partior or comparable networks as a non-shareholder bank, or whether its cross-bank tokenised flows route through correspondent rails rather than a tokenised settlement layer.
- Whether OCBC's Hong Kong subsidiary participates in Project Ensemble independently from the parent's Singapore activity, and what the current Ensemble workstream involvement looks like.