Always-on Is Rewriting the APAC Payments Playbook

The Operating Model Imperative

For Asia-Pacific banks, payments modernization is no longer simply a technology project. As cross-border volumes grow and financial activity becomes more continuous, clients increasingly expect banks to improve the way assets, collateral, cash and information move in an always-on environment. In particular, they want banks to offer speed, transparency and programmability for both information and cash movement. Together, these shifts are turning payments modernization into a broader operating model imperative for APAC banks.

In APAC, Speed Is Only the Start

The evidence for that imperative is quantitative, not just thematic. In 2025, outbound cross-border payments from the Asia-Pacific region totaled $13.5 trillion, or 31% of global outflows, and this is expected to grow at a faster rate than global averages, climbing to $24 trillion by 2033, accounting for 36% of global outflows overall.¹

Much of this momentum has been driven by the rapid adoption of 24/7/365 real-time payment rails, particularly in consumer account-to-account payments, which continue to displace cards and cash in many markets. Increasingly, APAC banks are also focusing on business-to-business and cross-border use cases, where growth prospects remain significant. Convera projects a 9.0% revenue CAGR for B2B payments between 2024 and 2030.²

These developments require the evolution of the APAC bank operating model to meet the developing expectations of treasury and corporate clients, including:

• Transformation: Always-on payments are reshaping the banking operating model, requiring a rethink of liquidity, risk, servicing and exception management in a 24/7 environment.
• Intelligence: Operating in a 24/7, real-time environment is possible with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate manual tasks and support human decision-making.
• Control: Speed alone is not a differentiator. Lasting value comes from delivering faster payments with the institutional-grade controls, resilience and transparency clients expect from a highly regulated global bank.
• Liquidity: As payments become continuous, liquidity management becomes more strategic, with real-time visibility and funding agility critical to supporting client activity.
• Connectivity: As banks accelerate digital banking initiatives, API integration is becoming critical to delivering real-time account information, payment initiation and FX execution. Seamless connectivity enables a more responsive and integrated banking experience in an always-on environment.
• Interoperability: In APAC, differences across schemes, standards and market practices continue to shape the payments landscape, making interoperability and orchestration in a regulated environment increasingly important.
• Transparency: Client expectations now extend beyond execution, with greater demand for visibility, richer information and confidence in how issues will be resolved across borders and time zones.
• Ecosystem: As blockchain extends always-on beyond payments into the broader financial system, banks must position for an ecosystem in which most financial activity runs continuously.

For APAC banks, these shifts make payments modernization an enterprise-wide agenda. The challenge is no longer simply to accelerate payments, but to redesign infrastructure and operating models for a continuously connected environment. The strategic opportunity lies in bringing payments, data and liquidity together into a more integrated always-on proposition.

BNY is supporting APAC banks as they advance that transition, including through real-time liquidity visibility, real-time FX enablement, API-native treasury integration and stronger cross-border payment capabilities. These capabilities are anchored in BNY’s unified, capability-based modular payments platform, designed for a 24/7/365, multi-rail world.

Always on, in U.S. Dollars

U.S. dollar payments are one of the most important areas of enhancement within the 24/7/365 ecosystem for APAC banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve estimates that more than half of all payments in the APAC region are in U.S. dollars, and that the currency accounts for around 74% of trade invoicing in Asia.³ This reflects the dollar’s central role in the region’s trade, funding and cross-border capital flows.

BNY supports APAC banks with U.S. dollar funds transfer and direct clearing through major payment networks, including Fed and CHIPS, alongside wire transfers, ACH, instant payments, multicurrency accounts and cross-border payment capabilities delivered through a correspondent network spanning more than 100 markets and 2,000 direct relationships. Across the region, BNY is helping banks evolve their U.S. dollar payments operating model to support a more continuous, connected and time-sensitive global economy.

APAC banks can now take advantage of BNY’s 24/7/365 USD Book Transfers, a continuous, automated book transfer solution that allows  businesses to move funds across accounts at BNY any time of the day or night, including weekends and U.S. holidays. The key use cases for this solution include:

• Interbranch funding to optimize capital
• Off-hour processing of margin requirements
• More efficient capital usage across trading operations
• Off-hour processing of payables and receivables
• Working capital optimization across global entities

As APAC banks adapt to an increasingly always-on financial ecosystem, U.S. dollar capabilities are a strategic part of payments modernization. Extending access, liquidity and operational continuity beyond traditional windows can help better support client activity, improve funding agility and position their operating model for a market that increasingly runs around the clock. BNY’s 24/7 USD Book Transfer solution is, for many financial firms and corporates, the first step in going 24/7. BNY will be expanding its capabilities continuously with additional support, features and currencies.

APAC Is Setting the Pace Globally on Tokenized Deposits

Tokenized deposits, digital representations of deposits issued on a blockchain, are moving quickly from proof of concept to live with Asia-Pacific emerging as an important hub for their development and adoption. Unlike stablecoins, tokenized deposits generally remain direct liabilities of the issuing bank, may be interest-bearing, and are recorded on bank balance sheets, subject to applicable local regulations. Their value extends across a wide range of institutional use cases - from moving liquidity between corporate multinational entities to meeting margin calls outside banking hours to settling tokenized assets and more. Depending on the infrastructure and controls in place, tokenized deposits could support around-the-clock transfers, rules-based payments and coordinated settlement of cash and assets.

Globally, tokenized deposit flows are now estimated to be about $3 trillion annually, supporting internal treasury movements, intercompany payments, and institutional settlements.⁴ Momentum is building across Asia-Pacific as financial institutions test how tokenized deposits could improve cross-border payments, treasury management and settlement. Growth is most apparent in jurisdictions with supportive regulatory frameworks,  such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan and Singapore. In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian now includes more than 40 financial institutions testing tokenized bonds, deposits and funds across interoperable ledgers.⁵ Other projects in the region include Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble and Australia’s Project Acacia.

BNY is helping shape the infrastructure and industry frameworks needed to scale tokenized deposits in APAC and globally. Since 2023, BNY has participated in Project Guardian and is also a core leader of Global Layer One (GL1), the MAS-backed shared digital infrastructure initiative intended to support interbank settlement of tokenized deposits. In this way, BNY is helping define the business, governance, risk, legal and technology foundations on which commercial tokenization networks can scale.

This work also extends into wholesale cross-border settlement through BNY’s participation in Project Agorá, a BIS- and IIF⁶-convened initiative that brought together seven central banks - including the Bank of Japan and Bank of Korea - and more than 40 regulated financial institutions. Its prototype demonstrated how tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves could support safer, more efficient and programmable multi-currency settlement for wholesale cross-border payments.

Complementing these efforts, interoperability across emerging networks is also critical. As one of 17 banks testing Swift’s shared-ledger initiative globally, BNY is helping shape the future of cross-border payments by exploring how interoperability can unlock greater speed, transparency, and resilience across financial networks.

In APAC, tokenized deposit use cases are centred on institutional and business-to-business applications, rather than consumer payments. Potential key use cases include:

• Margin and collateral: A participant facing a late-day or weekend margin call could benefit from access to bank money beyond local banking hours. Coordinating the cash leg with collateral movements could reduce delays and the need to hold excess cash in multiple locations.
• Institutional trading and settlement: Trading firms and financial institutions need to fund transactions across markets and time zones. Tokenized deposits could help them move cash closer to the point of settlement, subject to the participating banks’ controls and the available network connections.
• Corporate treasury: Tokenized deposits can support 24/7 corporate treasury and intragroup liquidity management, allowing funds to move between entity wallets without cut-off constraints, manual off-hours processing or excess pre-funding. Programmability can further automate reconciliation and embed liquidity rules directly into payment flows.

BNY’s next phase of tokenized deposits⁷ is designed to record client deposit balances on BNY’s private, permissioned blockchain and enable eligible clients to transfer bank money around the clock. Separately, eligible clients will be able to access tokenized money market fund share classes through LiquidityDirect^SM  , with ownership mirrored on blockchain infrastructure⁸. These are distinct offerings for institutional cash movement and investment.⁹

For APAC banks, tokenized deposits represent more than a new settlement mechanism. They point to a broader shift in how liquidity, collateral and money movement may be managed in a more programmable, always-on environment. As the market develops, the opportunity will be not only to support faster transactions, but to engage with new operating models around automation, interoperability and more efficient use of balance sheet resources.

Building for the Next Era of Always-on Finance

The challenge is no longer simply to move payments faster, but to operate effectively in a more continuous, connected and complex financial ecosystem. That requires a broader modernization of payments, liquidity and infrastructure to support always-on client needs with resilience, transparency and control. BNY is helping banks across the region meet that challenge through U.S. dollar payments capabilities, real-time liquidity and FX enablement, API-native connectivity and work to support the next generation of tokenized financial infrastructure. In a market moving toward always-on finance, BNY is helping APAC banks build for what comes next.