Enterprise leaders are well aware of the challenges associated with cross-border remittances. Sending a payment from one country to another traditionally takes more time, money and attention than leaders want to spend.

They often have to plan for T+2—the transaction date plus two business days—or longer settlement periods, depending on the sending and receiving countries. They need to calculate costs at each step of the transaction’s journey, from transfer fees to foreign exchange rate markups, while also managing other transparency and compliance challenges.

Global cross-border payments totaled $179 trillion in 2024, according to McKinsey data. Over the last five years, the G20 has been working toward a set of goals to address the main obstacles to cross-border payments—"high cost, slow speed, and insufficient transparency and access"—by the end of 2027. Reaching these goals “would have widespread benefits for citizens and economies worldwide, supporting economic growth, international trade, global development and financial inclusion,” yet a 2025 progress report found that “significant progress” was still needed to meet targets in all regions.

Until recently, enterprise leaders have needed to accept slow, costly and fragmented settlement cycles as just a part of doing business. Now, tokenization is challenging that assumption and providing a viable alternative. When companies adopt tokenization, representing their real-world assets as digital tokens on blockchains, they embrace a completely different way of sending and receiving funds. They no longer need intermediaries because they are managing payments in a complementary settlement environment that prioritizes cost savings, transparency and efficiency.

An interesting trend that I’ve seen in my work building enterprise Web3 infrastructure is that most leaders aren’t thinking about this in terms of fixing settlement problems. They want to reduce friction in their everyday operations. CFOs are worried about capital being tied up longer than necessary. Finance teams are managing uncertainty about when payments will actually arrive. Tech teams are reconciling data across multiple systems that aren’t aligned. Small decisions add up.

For enterprises with offices in multiple countries around the world, the shift to tokenization can significantly reduce settlement times and costs. Instead of waiting a week for funds to move from Miami to Milan, multinational companies can complete an instant blockchain transfer without foreign exchange charges and other fees. When these workflows are tokenized, teams also know exactly when a transaction is settled, where funds are at any moment and who owns what. This clarity relieves a great deal of operational stress.

The transition from traditional settlement to tokenization won’t happen overnight. What I've seen working in this space over the last 25 years is that it's easy to implement new software; it's more challenging to change behaviors and processes. It takes time to replace legacy infrastructure and reimagine day-to-day business operations.

But I’m bullish about the future of tokenization. We're already seeing adoption among major players in the banking sector. Early successes signal that tokenized assets are getting banks closer to achieving their goals of real-time settlement, interoperability and increased capital efficiency and liquidity.

I believe that in the next five to 10 years, tokenization will completely disrupt the way banking is done, starting with deposits and then expanding to lending and investment products. Telecommunications and other industries are not far behind. My company works with large telecom companies that are tokenizing infrastructure assets and enabling microtransactions that were not commercially viable a few years ago. Each pilot and production system that shows promising results paves the way for other companies and sectors.

I encourage leaders in every industry to pay attention to tokenization now. Learn from established use cases, and look for opportunities to replicate successes in your own company. I recommend building in phases, starting with a proof of concept, then launching a pilot or small production environment to test your concept. Focus on a specific, high-friction settlement flow, and see how tokenization actually changes it in practice. Once you’ve proven your concept's value on a small scale, you can move on to bigger use cases and larger pilots with external partners.

In the short term, you want to create new processes while integrating them with legacy systems and minimizing disruption to existing processes. Only replace a piece of the puzzle if you can demonstrate a clear value advantage in terms of cost or time or management.

In the long term, you want to design processes that hold up against real-life challenges. Identify gaps in your human and tech resources. With its inherently distributed systems, blockchain introduces its own brand of complexity, particularly in the domains of governance and compliance. Be aware of how this complexity can be both an asset and a liability as you scale.

We are still in the early days of tokenization, but now is the time to take action. I'm confident that this transformation is going to happen—sooner rather than later. Leaders who understand settlement as a strategic capability, not just a back-office function, can shape how value moves in their industries over the next decade.

Enterprise leaders are well aware of the challenges associated with cross-border remittances. Sending a payment from one country to another traditionally takes more time, money and attention than leaders want to spend.

They often have to plan for T+2—the transaction date plus two business days—or longer settlement periods, depending on the sending and receiving countries. They need to calculate costs at each step of the transaction’s journey, from transfer fees to foreign exchange rate markups, while also managing other transparency and compliance challenges.

Global cross-border payments totaled $179 trillion in 2024, according to McKinsey data. Over the last five years, the G20 has been working toward a set of goals to address the main obstacles to cross-border payments—"high cost, slow speed, and insufficient transparency and access"—by the end of 2027. Reaching these goals “would have widespread benefits for citizens and economies worldwide, supporting economic growth, international trade, global development and financial inclusion,” yet a 2025 progress report found that “significant progress” was still needed to meet targets in all regions.

Until recently, enterprise leaders have needed to accept slow, costly and fragmented settlement cycles as just a part of doing business. Now, tokenization is challenging that assumption and providing a viable alternative. When companies adopt tokenization, representing their real-world assets as digital tokens on blockchains, they embrace a completely different way of sending and receiving funds. They no longer need intermediaries because they are managing payments in a complementary settlement environment that prioritizes cost savings, transparency and efficiency.

An interesting trend that I’ve seen in my work building enterprise Web3 infrastructure is that most leaders aren’t thinking about this in terms of fixing settlement problems. They want to reduce friction in their everyday operations. CFOs are worried about capital being tied up longer than necessary. Finance teams are managing uncertainty about when payments will actually arrive. Tech teams are reconciling data across multiple systems that aren’t aligned. Small decisions add up.

For enterprises with offices in multiple countries around the world, the shift to tokenization can significantly reduce settlement times and costs. Instead of waiting a week for funds to move from Miami to Milan, multinational companies can complete an instant blockchain transfer without foreign exchange charges and other fees. When these workflows are tokenized, teams also know exactly when a transaction is settled, where funds are at any moment and who owns what. This clarity relieves a great deal of operational stress.

The transition from traditional settlement to tokenization won’t happen overnight. What I've seen working in this space over the last 25 years is that it's easy to implement new software; it's more challenging to change behaviors and processes. It takes time to replace legacy infrastructure and reimagine day-to-day business operations.

But I’m bullish about the future of tokenization. We're already seeing adoption among major players in the banking sector. Early successes signal that tokenized assets are getting banks closer to achieving their goals of real-time settlement, interoperability and increased capital efficiency and liquidity.

I believe that in the next five to 10 years, tokenization will completely disrupt the way banking is done, starting with deposits and then expanding to lending and investment products. Telecommunications and other industries are not far behind. My company works with large telecom companies that are tokenizing infrastructure assets and enabling microtransactions that were not commercially viable a few years ago. Each pilot and production system that shows promising results paves the way for other companies and sectors.

I encourage leaders in every industry to pay attention to tokenization now. Learn from established use cases, and look for opportunities to replicate successes in your own company. I recommend building in phases, starting with a proof of concept, then launching a pilot or small production environment to test your concept. Focus on a specific, high-friction settlement flow, and see how tokenization actually changes it in practice. Once you’ve proven your concept's value on a small scale, you can move on to bigger use cases and larger pilots with external partners.

In the short term, you want to create new processes while integrating them with legacy systems and minimizing disruption to existing processes. Only replace a piece of the puzzle if you can demonstrate a clear value advantage in terms of cost or time or management.

In the long term, you want to design processes that hold up against real-life challenges. Identify gaps in your human and tech resources. With its inherently distributed systems, blockchain introduces its own brand of complexity, particularly in the domains of governance and compliance. Be aware of how this complexity can be both an asset and a liability as you scale.

We are still in the early days of tokenization, but now is the time to take action. I'm confident that this transformation is going to happen—sooner rather than later. Leaders who understand settlement as a strategic capability, not just a back-office function, can shape how value moves in their industries over the next decade.