Author: Digital Trade Outlook

Razorpay has launched Vulcan, which it calls India’s first transformer based AI foundation model built specifically for payments. The goal is to make every digital payment in the country more reliable, safer and predictable. Built with NVIDIA and AWS, the model combines Razorpay’s payments data with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing and AWS’s cloud infrastructure, groundwork the company says India’s e commerce market will need as it heads toward a projected $350 billion by 2030. An internal Razorpay study across 1.5 million shoppers and more than 51,000 businesses found the same payment friction, failed transactions, drop offs and delays, showing up identically…

DBS and Citi have demonstrated the potential for 24/7 cross-border USD payments by completing a weekend transaction between Singapore and the U.S. using tokenised deposits on the Swift Digital Ledger. Settled within minutes instead of up to two business days, the transaction highlights how tokenised money on established banking infrastructure could improve liquidity management, reduce time-zone and weekend delays, and give corporate treasurers faster access to funds across markets.

India’s TReDS platforms are looking to deepen MSME invoice financing by bringing insurance companies and mutual funds in as secondary investors. RXIL’s proposed model would allow existing financiers to sell part of their exposure, improving liquidity and enabling them to recycle capital into new MSME financing transactions.

Stablecoin firms are increasingly turning to Big Four AML/CFT reviews to strengthen compliance credibility, build trust with banks and regulators, and demonstrate that they meet traditional financial risk standards.

KB Kookmin Bank has launched an import export corporate payment service built on Kinexys by J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain Deposit Account (BDA) network, making it the first Korean financial institution to use the network for import and export payment services. The service will run through KB Kookmin’s domestic branches in Korea and its Singapore branch, covering remittances to 10 countries: the United States, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, South Africa and Korea. It will initially support US dollar transactions. Once live, Korean importers and exporters will be able to settle USD payments faster and more…

The RBI will conduct a ₹7 trillion 30-day VRRR auction on September 7 to absorb excess banking-system liquidity, with an early redemption option designed to encourage stronger bank participation. The move highlights the challenge of balancing effective liquidity management with banks’ need for flexibility.

Broadridge has expanded its Distributed Ledger Repo platform to support G7 securities, strengthening the use of tokenisation for cross-border financing, intraday liquidity and collateral movement. With $7.4 trillion in repo transactions processed in August, the move highlights a broader shift toward scaling DLT-based settlement infrastructure, as regulators and financial institutions develop frameworks for tokenised assets, collateral and central-bank money.

Standard Chartered is expanding institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading into the UAE through Standard Chartered DIFC, becoming the first Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) to offer the capability in the market. The service builds on the bank’s existing digital asset custody offering, allowing eligible institutional clients to trade deliverable crypto through existing electronic trading channels and settle with their preferred custodian. The UAE launch strengthens Standard Chartered’s broader digital assets strategy spanning custody, trading and tokenisation.

Euroclear and HSBC are partnering to launch AutoFX, an automated FX service designed to help financial institutions prepare for Europe’s and the UK’s T+1 settlement shift in October 2027. The service will integrate FX conversion directly into securities settlement across more than 30 currencies, offering real-time tracking, intraday fixing points, transparent pricing and tools to reduce funding requirements. The partnership highlights the growing need for automated FX and settlement infrastructure as markets move toward faster post-trade processing.

TabaPay raises $155 million from FTV Capital to acquire FDIC-insured Transact Bank, expanding its payment infrastructure and banking capabilities with plans to launch TabaBank.