Citi’s treasury and trade solutions customers were asking for multinational cash management and trade services available 24/7 and that’s where Citi Token Services was born. “The pain point was our clients wanted 24/7, always on, liquidity and payments,” said Ryan Rugg, Citi’s global head of digital assets, treasury and trade solutions. Ambrish Bansal, Citi’s global head of liquidity and cash concentration solutions, liquidity management services in the bank’s treasury and trade solutions unit, said the initiative stemmed from clients’ requests. “It’s really important for us to ensure that our clients can leverage cutting-edge technologies and new developments and move their treasury management into the real-time world,” Bansal said. “The whole idea behind Citi Token Services was born out of this pressing need by our clients to ensure that their money can move around the global ecosystem in as [close to] real time as possible.” The bank uses a private permissioned distributed ledger and a distributed database with embedded business logic to enable a range of services from intraday lending, cross-border payments and conditional transfer of funds to supply chain financing, trade settlements and fractional ownership to identity verification and know-your-customer compliance. Citi Token Services adheres to the ERC-20 technical standard — a community-created framework for creating smart contract-enabled fungible tokens on the ethereum blockchain. The bank owns and manages all the blockchain technology infrastructure it’s using for its token services, which will be integrated into the bank’s global network. Clients will be able to access Citi Token Services through its CitiDirect online portal or API connectivity. Rugg said multinational companies with hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts with Citi and other banks can use the program to manage liquidity and payments across the globe. Before, they would have to forecast and leave money in different branches as well as keep track of cut-off times and holidays around the world when money can’t be moved.