Alibaba Reveals Plans for Tokenized Fiat Payments with JPMorgan

E-commerce giant Alibaba is planning to launch a stablecoin-like global payments system in December that will use its banking partner JPMorgan’s technology, the company said in an exclusive interview with CNBC on Friday, Nov. 14.

The system – which Alibaba.com president Kuo Zhang said would comprise tokenized fiat payments – aims to support the company’s e-commerce network and streamline cross-border business-to-business (B2B) payments.

Alibaba’s B2B e-commerce platform is experimenting with tokenized USD and EUR to start, with a rollout targeted for next month.

“We are leveraging the blockchain technology using tokenization to ensure that both the buyers and sellers can enable the 24/7 and also can reduce their payment fees,” Zhang told CNBC.

He emphasized that while the planned tokenized fiat payments aren’t technically stablecoins, the system leverages the same technology.

The move reflects a growing trend of large institutions turning to tokenization — the process of representing real-world assets (RWAs), like stocks, treasuries, or private credit, on a blockchain as digital tokens. In turn, tokenization can make the assets more divisible, and compostable across decentralized finance.

This comes as the tokenized RWA sector continues to grow, with total on-chain RWA value surpassing $36 billion — a sharp rise from $15 billion in January, according to RWAxyz.

AI Mode

Alibaba is also planning to roll out a feature called “agentic pay,” which uses AI-powered smart contracts to automate settlement, disputes, and fund releases. “We feel the urgency that we need to use AI to redesign how people do global trade,” Zhang told CNBC. “We think it’s going to be a paradigm shift for e-commerce for B2B.”

Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma and partners in 1999, generated over $137 billion in revenue in the company’s last fiscal year. The group’s e-commerce platform helps businesses find suppliers and products worldwide and buy goods directly.

Earlier this week, JPMorgan officially launched its tokenized deposits asset, JPMD, on Coinbase’s Layer 2 Base. The banking giant’s digital asset arm, Kinexys, originally piloted the asset in June, and introduced the concept of a deposit token in a dedicated whitepaper.