Uber Pilots Weekend Fund Redemptions on Canton With HSBC Deposits

The Uber Canton pilot, announced on Friday, had Uber use bank deposits held on a blockchain to buy shares in a tokenised money market fund and then sell part of the holding over a weekend. HSBC Bank USA said it had worked with Franklin Templeton, Tradeweb Markets, Fireblocks and “pilot client Uber” on what it called “the successful demonstration of a 24/7 liquidity and settlement solution on the Canton Network”.

The joint release, published on the Canton Network’s newsroom and on Tradeweb’s website on 30 October, describes a completed pilot. It gives no amounts, no number of trades and no dates for the transactions, and it does not say when, or whether, the setup will be offered to other companies.

What the Uber Canton pilot did

“Using HSBC Tokenized Deposits, Uber purchased Franklin Templeton tokenized money market funds (“MMF”) on Tradeweb, through delivery-versus-payment transactions on the Canton Network via Fireblocks,” the release says. Delivery versus payment means the cash and the fund shares change hands in the same step, so neither side is left waiting for the other.

The pilot also gave Uber “the ability to liquidate a portion of tokenized fund holdings, including over a weekend, while continuing to earn yield throughout the investment lifecycle”, according to the companies. Each firm had a role. HSBC supplied the tokenised cash, Franklin Templeton the fund, Tradeweb the trading venue and Fireblocks the wallet technology, which the release says lets treasurers control “wallet assets, signing rules, and user entitlements”. Canton, a blockchain built for financial institutions, recorded the settlement.

The problem the companies say they are addressing is familiar to corporate treasurers. Selling money market fund shares or moving bank money outside banking hours runs into cut-off times and “multi-day settlement cycles (T+1 or longer)”, the release says, so large companies keep idle cash or credit lines on hand to meet payments. “By keeping eligible cash invested longer, the pilot showed the potential to improve working capital yield by reducing cash buffers while preserving access to liquidity when payments are required,” it says.

Deposits and fund shares carry different protections

The two assets in the pilot are not the same thing. HSBC Tokenized Deposits “represent deposit liabilities of HSBC Bank USA, N.A. and are FDIC-insured up to applicable limits”, according to the release, and they “reflect commercial bank money held in HSBC Demand Deposit Accounts”. Fiat proceeds from redemptions “can only settle to KYC-verified corporate bank accounts”, it says.

The fund shares are different. Franklin Templeton’s disclosure in the same release says “an investment in the fund is not a bank account and is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other government agency”, and that “you could lose money by investing in the fund”. The release does not name the fund Uber bought.

What the companies said

Odette Rodrigues, vice-president for corporate finance, treasury and capital markets at Uber, said: “Always-on access to cash and the ability to put liquidity to work more efficiently are increasingly important to our business.” She added: “This pilot is an important first step in our journey towards a more efficient, 24/7 model for managing our working capital.”

Manish Kohli, head of global payments solutions at HSBC, said that “demonstrating interoperability of HSBC Tokenized Deposits on the Canton Network enables seamless delivery-vs-payment”. Matt Jones, head of liquidity distribution at Franklin Templeton, said Franklin Templeton “has been at the forefront of bringing money market funds on-chain through our Benji platform”.

Daniel Staniford, co-head of corporate and head of global corporate sales at Tradeweb, said: “This pilot explores how those established electronic workflows could extend to tokenized money market funds and digital cash.” Yuval Rooz, co-founder and chief executive of Digital Asset, which created Canton, said Canton “allows liquidity to move across institutional boundaries with the privacy and control the market requires”.

Where this fits

HSBC has run other tests with its tokenised deposits. Earlier this month it and Ant Digital Technologies tested AI agents paying for services with tokenised deposits, a trial the companies said was not a commercial launch. JPMorgan has taken a similar product further: its JPM Coin deposit token now runs on Ethereum, for approved institutional clients only.

Round-the-clock trading of tokenised money market funds is also arriving elsewhere. In Hong Kong, the Securities and Futures Commission approved 24/7 secondary trading of two tokenised money market funds on a licensed platform in October. On Canton itself, trading firms DRW and Marex completed a swap tied to a tokenised bond index, which they described as the first over-the-counter swap on the network.

A treasury test, not yet a product

The interesting part of the pilot is the weekend sale. Corporate treasurers already hold money market funds; what the release claims is new is the ability to turn those holdings into usable cash when banks are closed. If that works at scale, a company like Uber could keep less cash sitting idle for payments that fall outside banking hours, which is the benefit the companies point to.

But the release offers no way to judge the size of that benefit. Without amounts, trade counts or a yield figure, the pilot shows that the pieces connect, not how much a treasurer would save. Uber’s own words are cautious too: Rodrigues calls it “an important first step”, and the release stops at “the potential to improve working capital yield”.

The pilot also depends on two very different assets meeting in one transaction. The deposit side carries FDIC insurance up to the usual limits, while the fund side carries the usual warning that investors can lose money. A treasurer weighing this setup would be swapping insured bank money for an uninsured fund for the hours in between payments. That trade-off exists today with conventional money market funds; the pilot shortens the time it takes to get back out, rather than removing the risk.

Sources

• Canton Network: Uber Completes Pilot of a First-Ever On-Chain Liquidity and Settlement Solution on a Public Network Pioneered by HSBC, Franklin Templeton, Tradeweb, and Fireblocks, on Canton (30 Oct 2026)
• Tradeweb: Uber Completes Pilot of a First-Ever On-Chain Liquidity and Settlement Solution on a Public Network (30 Oct 2026)
• Canton Network on X: Uber pilot post (30 Oct 2026)

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