Ant enters the stablecoin market, has the battle between giants begun?

Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Stablecoins are a new battlefield for global payments that no technology giant wants to miss.

As the new Hong Kong stablecoin regulation policy is about to be implemented, Ant Group has taken action. Its international business entity Ant International plans to apply for a stablecoin issuer license as soon as the policy takes effect, and simultaneously promote compliance layout in markets such as Singapore and Luxembourg.

JD.com, Ant, Standard Chartered Bank...a "battle among giants" for stablecoins is about to begin.

Will Ant's stablecoin layout open up a new space of $150 billion?

The news started on June 10, when Deutsche Bank announced a partnership with Ant International, and the two sides will explore cutting-edge areas such as tokenized deposits and stablecoin solutions. This cross-border financial technology cooperation has become a prelude to Ant International's stablecoin layout.

Two days later, Ant International announced that it would apply for a Hong Kong stablecoin issuer license. It said it was accelerating investment and expanding cooperation in global treasury management, and putting AI, blockchain and stablecoin innovations into real and reliable large-scale applications.

This move may indicate that Ant Group has incorporated stablecoins into the core of its global financial technology strategy, intending to use them to build a "stable anchor" covering cross-border capital flows. The news triggered a strong reaction in the market, with Hong Kong stocks "Ant Financial concept stocks" collectively rising. Yunfeng Financial once soared 98% during the session, and Lion Holdings rose nearly 15%.

It is worth noting that according to Bloomberg, the total amount of global funds processed by Ant International in 2024 will exceed 1 trillion US dollars, of which more than one-third will be completed through its blockchain platform Whale. A rough estimate is that more than 300 billion US dollars of funds will be circulated on the chain. If half of them can be extended to the stablecoin scenario, then the theoretical space for stablecoin transactions in Ant's existing business system alone has reached the level of 150 billion US dollars.

Ant's ten-year chain

In fact, Ant Group’s exploration of Web3 has already begun quietly and has continued to advance in the past decade.

As early as 2015, Ant Financial established a blockchain team to start systematic research on this cutting-edge technology. The following year, its first blockchain charity application, "Hearing-impaired Children Regain Their Voices," was successfully launched, achieving full-chain tracking of the flow of donations, becoming a representative case of early blockchain technology implementation in China.

In 2018, Ant Blockchain completed the transformation from a "technical project" to a "platform ecosystem", officially launched the partner program, and opened the BaaS blockchain platform to the outside world. This strategic shift also laid the foundation for the subsequent product explosion.

In 2019, Ant's blockchain products began to be implemented at an accelerated pace: "Double Chain" was launched in the field of supply chain finance to serve the financing needs of small and medium-sized enterprises; the origin of 400 million overseas shopping products on Tmall Double 11 was traced through blockchain; the original image copyright protection platform "Quezao" was launched; and even the blockchain cross-border remittance network from Malaysia to Pakistan was opened, showing a strong ambition for globalization.

In 2020, Ant officially upgraded Ant Blockchain to "Ant Chain" and announced that its average daily chain access times has exceeded 100 million times.

In 2021, Ant Chain entered the NFT field and launched payment code skin NFT.

In 2023, Ant launched ZAN, a sub-brand focusing on Web3, in Hong Kong to provide compliant technical solutions for overseas markets. In the same year, Ant Group cooperated with HSBC to complete the test of internal corporate payment transactions based on tokenized deposits, integrating traditional finance and on-chain technology in real scenarios for the first time.

In 2024, Ant Group completed its reorganization, and its three subsidiaries, Ant International, OceanBase, and Ant Digits, operated independently, respectively establishing a board of directors and CEO structure. Since then, Ant International and Ant Digits have continued to deploy in the Web3 field, especially in the RWA field.

In December 2024, Sui reached a cooperation with Ant Financial to promote the implementation of RWA in the new energy industry.

In April 2025, Ant Financial announced the launch of the Layer2 blockchain Jovay for overseas markets.

In May 2025, Ant International became the first corporate client in Hong Kong to use HSBC's tokenized deposit service.

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From the underlying chain to compliant overseas expansion, from public welfare scenarios to global payments, Ant continues to build its own Web3 territory using a quiet but strategically profound path.

Giants compete for brand

As Hong Kong launches the stablecoin sandbox test and makes it clear that it will soon launch a licensing system, a race among giants to obtain licenses is quietly underway. Ant is the first to take action, but this game is already crowded with well-prepared players.

As early as July last year, five giants had become participants in the "sandbox" for stablecoin issuers: JD CoinChain Technology, Yuanbi Technology, Standard Chartered Bank, Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecom.

In addition, the following companies have been interested in participating in the issuance of stablecoins in Hong Kong:

In November 2023, Dr. Xiao Feng, founder of Hashkey Group, said in his speech that Hashkey Group will jointly issue stablecoins in Hong Kong with Yuanbi Technology and ZhongAn Bank.

In May 2024, Hong Kong-listed company Yucheng Kejin reached a cooperation with Chainlink to explore the issuance of Hong Kong stablecoins

Judging from the composition of the players that have surfaced so far, the Hong Kong stablecoin track is gathering three types of forces: traditional financial institutions such as Standard Chartered Bank and ZhongAn Bank regard stablecoins as a testing ground for tokenized deposits and on-chain accounts; technology and e-commerce giants such as Ant Group and JD.com are more focused on integrating stablecoins into their ecosystems to promote the application of cross-border payments and digital consumption scenarios; and Web3 native forces represented by Animoca Brands and HashKey Group are trying to use Hong Kong's policy window to create competitive on-chain stable assets.

Ant Group's strategic layout not only demonstrates its keen insight into global market dynamics, but also heralds a new direction for payment and capital flow. With the influx of more giants, the maturity and innovation of the stablecoin ecosystem will drive the global payment system into a new era.