The Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), in partnership with SCB 10X, is pleased to announce its collaboration with Lightnet to enhance cross-border payments and remittances, by using stablecoin for settlement on the public blockchain network. This groundbreaking project marks Thailand's first use case of stablecoin for cross-border payments and remittances, setting a new standard for the financial services industry. With the integration of Fireblocks' custody technology, the assets are secured at the back end, ensuring top-tier protection and trust between the parties.

This project has successfully graduated from the Bank of Thailand’s (BOT) regulatory sandbox in October 2024, the project is now fully commercialized, offering a transformative solution for cross-border transactions and marks a significant milestone in Thailand's financial innovation.

This innovative solution provides numerous benefits, including better capital efficiency by enhancing management of funds through the elimination of pre-funding between partners, as well as reduced operational costs. Users can use local currencies for making transactions and experience improved reliability and availability, with the service accessible 24/7. Furthermore, the project leverages blockchain technology to create a truly global network for remittances. 

“The collaboration between SCB and Lightnet underscores a commitment to pioneering financial innovation and improving the remittance experience for users. By integrating blockchain technology, the project promises a more efficient, reliable, and accessible solution for cross-border transactions.

By leveraging blockchain technology and stablecoins, we are making cross-border remittances more efficient, reliable, and accessible for everyone. SCB has a long-standing tradition of embracing innovative technologies to enhance our financial services. This latest collaboration with Lightnet and Fireblocks builds upon SCB's history of pioneering fintech solutions. SCB's consistent commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology demonstrates our dedication to providing efficient, accessible financial services to our customers." said Thanawatn Kittisuwan, First Executive Vice President & Head of Digital Juristic & Payment at SCB. 

"At SCB 10X, our mission is to drive the adoption of financial technology innovation at SCB, SCBX Group and in the broader financial services industry. By harnessing blockchain technology, we are significantly enhancing the speed, efficiency, and accessibility of the international remittance transactions. This project showcases the real-world impact of fintech innovation, bringing substantial improvements to both the bank's operations and our customers' experiences. We are proud to have played a pivotal role in moving this initiative forward, coordinating efforts across teams to bring this transformative solution to life. We are thrilled about its potential to improve the efficiency of cross-border finance." said Mukaya (Tai) Panich, CIO & CEO of SCB 10X.

“Lightnet is dedicated to develop the next generation universal financial network in order to solve various financial pain points for the customers. Our commitment is to provide individuals and businesses with financial access, financial mobility and efficiency. We believe that the launch of this revolutionary cross-border payments and remittance solution is the first step towards this goal. This solution will provide significant improvements to customers’ experience in cross-border money transfer and will lower transaction time and cost and be accessible on the 24/7 basis. This project also promotes financial inclusion as there is a lower capital requirement per transaction. Beyond this, the project also provides unique value propositions to retail, corporate, and institutional clients and will help strengthen Thailand’s position as the ASEAN financial hub.” said Tridbodi Arunanondchai, Vice Chairman and Group CEO of Lightnet.

“We're excited to be part of this groundbreaking initiative with SCB and Lightnet. This project demonstrates the transformative power of blockchain technology in revolutionizing traditional banking services, and showcases how financial institutions can leverage cutting-edge technology and a robust digital asset infrastructure to innovate and improve their services.” said Michael Shaulov, CEO and Co-founder of Fireblocks. “By providing our secure custody technology, Fireblocks is helping to ensure that cross-border transactions are not only faster and more efficient, but also meet the highest standards of security. We believe this project sets a new benchmark for the integration of stablecoins into mainstream banking services and look forward to seeing its impact on the way money moves across borders.

Building on this success, SCB and Lightnet are planning to extend the use case to corporate customers, facilitating both inward and outward remittances. This expansion aims to provide businesses with the same benefits enjoyed by retail customers, further revolutionizing the cross-border financial transactions.

About SCB

The Siam Commercial Bank PCL is the first Thai bank. The bank is one of Thailand’s leading universal banks, providing a full range of financial services through its nationwide branch network to customers in all segments, including wholesalers, SMEs, and retail banking services. SCB is committed to becoming Thailand’s “Most Admired Bank” with “Digital Bank with Human Touch” strategy and “the number one in universal digital bank in wealth management, offering seamless experiences across all channels to customers” mission by balancing value propositions for all stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders, regulators, and society – and becoming a leader in shaping the future of Thailand’s banking industry. For more information, please visit https://www.scb.co.th/.

About SCB 10X 

SCB 10X Co., Ltd. is a disruptive technology investment arm of SCBX Group, and was established in January 2020 with a “moonshot mission” to achieve exponential growth through technology innovation and investment in disruptive technologies such as Digital Asset, Blockchain, Web3, as well as AI & Deep Tech. For more information, please visit https://scb10x.com/.

About Lightnet

Lightnet is a fintech company building the next generation financial technology that targets areas of financial accessibility, financial mobility and cross-border money transfer. The company has regional hubs in Singapore, Lithuania and Dubai with operations across Asia and Europe. Co-founded by Mr. Chatchaval Jiaravanon and Mr. Tridbodi Arunanondchai. Lightnet offers cutting-edge multi-asset global payment solutions with real-time settlement capabilities powered by AI and blockchain technology. For more information, please visit https://lightnet.io/.

About Fireblocks

Fireblocks is an easy-to-use platform to create new blockchain-based products, and manage day-to-day digital asset operations. Exchanges, banks, PSPs, lending desks, custodians, trading desks, and hedge funds can securely scale their digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves thousands of organizations in the financial, payments, and web3 space, has secured the transfer of over $6 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. Find out why CISOs and Ops Teams love Fireblocks at www.fireblocks.com.