Recently, Ant International and Thailand’s Kasikornbank (KASIKORNBANK, KBank) announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation. The two parties plan to develop related solutions around cross-border U.S. dollar transactions, payment acceptance, clearing, settlement and liquidity management.
Compared with the previous cooperation between the two parties around payment acceptance, this announcement adds cross-border US dollar fund processing content.
According to the disclosure, KBank plans to combine its regulated financial capabilities with Ant International’s financial AI solutions to explore real-time, 24/7 cross-border U.S. dollar transactions, and plans to use Blockchain Deposit Accounts provided by Kinexys, a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase’s payment business, to support real-time U.S. dollar liquidity allocation.
The announcement also mentioned that the two parties plan to develop solutions covering payment acceptance, clearing and settlement. The goals include improving the efficiency of inbound, outbound transactions and settlement related to Ant International, and improving the cash flow management capabilities of its service merchants.
However, the current disclosure still belongs to the cooperation memorandum and the proposed development plan.
The announcement has not been disclosed as to when the relevant services will be launched, which customers they will be targeted at, which settlement scenarios are applicable, and how fees will be arranged.
Both parties also made it clear that the subsequent advancement of the project still needs to meet necessary legal and regulatory approval requirements.
KBank and Ant International have previously cooperated in payment.
According to this announcement, KBank’s mobile banking application K PLUS has been connected to the relevant cross-border payment ecosystem through Alipay+, a subsidiary of Ant International.
The announcement also stated that K PLUS has become one of the payment options for Thai merchants on Google Pay through integration with Ant International merchant payment service Antom.
Previous cooperation mainly focused on consumer payment and merchant acceptance. This disclosure further involves the fund processing and settlement arrangements after the transaction is completed.
KBank already has a corresponding foundation in local payment business.
The bank’s investor materials for the first quarter of 2026 show that K PLUS users reached 24.5 million; as of January 2026, its bank card acceptance merchant services had a market share of 40.24% in terms of sales, and the materials ranked it first in the market.
During the same period, KBank’s cross-border business revenue increased year-on-year, mainly driven by the increase in inward and outward remittances and the continued growth of small-amount transactions.
The materials also include merchant payments, corporate transfers and cross-border payments in the payment business direction.
Since this year, Ant International has also disclosed a number of cooperation related to financial services.
In February, Malaysia’s CIMB Banking Group (CIMB) signed a memorandum of cooperation with Ant International to explore cross-border payment, fund management and liquidity management solutions.
In April, Ant International and Citigroup disclosed the PayTo solution in Australia. WorldFirst customers can recharge World Account in real time by linking their bank accounts.
This KBank cooperation newly disclosed cross-border US dollar fund processing arrangements.
For cross-border merchants, in addition to payment coverage, whether to use a payment service also depends on settlement arrangements, fund allocation efficiency, exchange costs, exception handling and fund security.
Whether this type of cooperation can be transformed into services that are actually available to merchants requires observation of three aspects of information.
The first is regulatory approval and formal launch arrangements. The memorandum cannot be directly equated with the services provided; second is the settlement speed, fees, currency and service objects. Only by forming clear rules can merchants judge the actual use value; third is the fund security and responsibility arrangements. Cross-border transactions involve banks, payment institutions and technical service providers, and the exception handling and fund guarantee mechanisms need to be clear.
Before the service is launched, fee arrangements and actual transaction data are disclosed, the actual impact of this cooperation on merchant settlement and fund use still needs to be observed.
