Alibaba partners with JPMorgan to accelerate tokenized trade

The arrangement, first described by Alibaba.com President Kuo Zhang, centers on JPMorgan’s deposit-token infrastructure and aims to cut intermediaries in international transfers.

This partnership is positioned as a practical upgrade for exporters and buyers in Asia-to-U.S./EU corridors where funds often hop through several correspondent banks before reaching suppliers. With deposit tokens, Alibaba would transfer a bank-backed digital representation of fiat on a permissioned blockchain between KYC’d institutions, reducing hops and settlement uncertainty.

Tokenized deposits are liabilities of a regulated bank and move on a bank-operated chain; stablecoins are typically issued by non-banks against reserve assets. JPMorgan describes its deposit-token products (JPM Coin/JPMD) as on-chain money for institutional clients, offering 24/7 peer-to-peer transfers on controlled networks and, in JPMD’s case, compatibility with public-chain environments under bank compliance. Alibaba’s initial deployment focuses on bank-issued tokens for regulatory and operational clarity. 

The partnership adds a new rail alongside Alibaba’s earlier blockchain experiments. In 2020, Ant Group — Alibaba’s affiliate — launched the AntChain-powered “Trusple” platform to streamline cross-border trade documentation and financing for SMEs, and later drew bank partners such as BBVA. More recently, Ant International and Singapore’s DBS announced plans at the Singapore FinTech Festival to expand QR payments globally and explore tokenized deposits.

For merchants, the near-term change is about payment speed and fewer intermediaries, not a switch to crypto volatility. Zhang’s remarks stressed that Alibaba will start with bank tokens and may “explore stablecoins in the future,” keeping settlement anchored to balances on a regulated bank’s books and not to third-party reserves. That should help compliance teams map on-chain transfers to traditional account controls and AML rules.

JPMorgan has been vocal about deposit tokens as institutional money that can interoperate with tokenized assets and on-chain workflows. The bank’s materials describe deposit tokens as claims on commercial-bank deposits moved over blockchain with full KYC/AML and predictable redemption, aimed at treasury/payments clients that want 24/7 movement without leaving the regulated perimeter.