Uber has tested a tokenized money market fund on the Canton Network, paying for Franklin Templeton fund shares with HSBC tokenized deposits and redeeming part of the holding over a weekend, the companies said on Friday 30 October in a press release shared with CoinDesk. Nobody has published the amount. The arrangement remains a pilot, not a product, and it is not the first of its kind to be reported: a very close test by Ant International, with the same bank and the same fund group, came to light nine days earlier.
The only measure of the benefit is a count of days. According to Bloomberg, as cited by Bitcoin.com News and crypto.news, Uber bought on a weekday, sold on a Sunday and collected about 1.5 more days of yield than it would have with a conventional fund sold on a Friday. That figure is 1.5 days of interest, not a 1.5% return.
What Uber did with the tokenized money market fund
Five companies and one network had a part in the test. Uber used HSBC tokenized deposits, which are digital claims on bank money, to buy shares of a Franklin Templeton tokenized money market fund through Tradeweb. Later, over a weekend, it redeemed part of what it held.
Settlement was delivery versus payment: the fund tokens and the payment moved together on Canton, so neither side was left waiting for the other. Fireblocks supplied the wallet infrastructure.
| Participant | Role in the pilot, per CoinDesk |
|---|---|
| Uber | Invested spare cash and redeemed part of it |
| HSBC | Tokenized deposits used as payment |
| Franklin Templeton | Tokenized money market fund shares (fund not named) |
| Tradeweb | Channel for the purchase; its exact role is not described |
| Fireblocks | Wallet infrastructure |
| Canton Network | Chain on which tokens and payment settled together |
Odette Rodrigues, Uber’s vice president of corporate finance, treasury and capital markets, called the test “an important first step” towards what she described as a 24/7 model for working capital. “Always-on access to cash and the ability to put liquidity to work more efficiently are increasingly important to our business,” she said, according to CoinDesk.
Why 1.5 days of yield is a small number, and an unexplained one
The reason for the test sits in the weekly calendar. A corporate treasury usually sells money fund holdings before markets close on Friday, crypto.news and Genfinity note, so the cash is ready when banks shut. Conventional funds have early-afternoon dealing cut-offs and settle the same day at best, according to Ledger Insights. A token that can be redeemed on a Sunday keeps earning for longer.
By Coindaro’s own arithmetic, 1.5 days is about 0.4% of a year’s interest on a 365-day count, whatever the fund pays. On a large balance that can still be real money, but the balance is unknown, so the dollar value cannot be worked out from what has been published. The reports citing Bloomberg do not show how the 1.5 was calculated.
The day of the purchase is unsettled too. CoinDesk names no day and speaks only of a weekend. Crypto.news and Genfinity say Uber bought on a Thursday, while Bitcoin.com News says Tuesday, and all of them are relaying Bloomberg, whose original Coindaro has not read. So this report says only that the purchase came on a weekday. All three outlets put the sale on a Sunday. CoinDesk and Canton both say Uber sold part of its holding, not all of it. No calendar date has been published for either trade.
The larger claim is about buffers. The tool gives Uber “greater flexibility to optimize yield on available cash”, Rodrigues said, while cutting the need for liquidity buffers, according to CoinDesk. If a treasury can sell on any day of the week, it may need less cash sitting idle before a weekend. Uber has given no figure for how much of a buffer this pilot could replace.
Ant International’s similar test was reported nine days earlier
Ledger Insights reported on 21 October that Ant International had used HSBC tokenized deposits to sweep excess treasury cash into Franklin Templeton’s Benji tokenized money market fund. The trades themselves are undated in both cases, so nobody can say which came first. The Ant news came out through LinkedIn posts, not a formal announcement. HSBC called it a first transaction, Ledger Insights treated it as a pilot, and no amount was given.
The plumbing looks different. Ant ran the subscription through WhaleRTP, its own blockchain treasury platform, which Ledger Insights says appears to be the link between HSBC’s permissioned ledger and Benji’s public-chain tokens. That report names no chain, does not mention Canton and says nothing of a weekend sale. It was also Ant’s second such move in four months, after a June arrangement with an Amundi fund.
That puts Canton’s claim in proportion. Canton Network said in a post on X on 30 October, reproduced by Genfinity, that Uber “completed a first-ever pilot of an onchain liquidity and settlement solution on Canton, a public network”. The same post says Uber sold part of its holdings “even on a weekend, while earning yield until disbursement”. “First-ever” is Canton’s own wording, and it can only stand for this kind of test on Canton.
What Uber adds is a client from outside payments and banking, with a named treasury executive on the record. In June 2025 chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi was still describing stablecoins as something Uber was studying, crypto.news recalls.
Canton already had most of these partners
The test builds on work these firms had done on the same network. Franklin Templeton integrated its Benji platform with Canton in November 2025, according to Genfinity. HSBC ran an earlier stablecoin, which is a claim on its issuer.">tokenized deposit pilot on Canton in April 2026, which simulated issuance, transfer and atomic settlement, and Genfinity says no live client took part. That same month, on 13 April, HSBC opened its Tokenized Deposit Service to eligible corporate and institutional clients in the US.
Tradeweb was already there as well. A Canton release dated 1 July 2026 describes a trade executed on Tradeweb’s platform in which Franklin Templeton transferred a tokenized US Treasury to Virtu Financial in exchange for USDCx, a tokenized cash asset.
Franklin’s fund shares live on other chains too. Its fund on the XRP Ledger reached about $200 million, with one wallet holding every share. J.P. Morgan took its two tokenized money funds to Solana for qualified US investors with $1 million.
HSBC wants more US clients, and Fireblocks offers a forecast
Manish Kohli, HSBC’s global head of payments, said the capability is open to US customers, in comments to Bloomberg reported by Bitcoin.com News. “Over time we’ll look to expand the number of available investment options, in addition to Franklin Templeton,” he said. Crypto.news reports that he saw the pilot as proof of technical readiness. No US client other than Uber has been named.
Fireblocks chief executive Michael Shaulov went further. “I expect hundreds to begin using this model within the next 18 months,” he told Bloomberg, according to Bitcoin.com News. That is a forecast from the company selling the wallet infrastructure, and he named no clients.
What Uber, HSBC and Franklin Templeton have not disclosed
The list of missing details is longer than the list of facts. By the evening of 31 October, Coindaro had found no press release page from Uber, HSBC or Franklin Templeton, and no outlet it read links to one.
- The amount invested and the amount redeemed.
- The yield earned, in dollars or as a rate.
- How long the test ran and how many trades it included.
- The name and share class of the fund.
- Which HSBC legal entity issued the deposits. None of the reports names one.
- What exactly Tradeweb did. Genfinity notes that one outlet names a different venue.
- Any fee paid to Tradeweb or anyone else.
- Any regulatory approval or status tied to the test.
- Whether Uber will carry on after the pilot.
Who can use tokenized deposits and funds like this
For now, this is a large-company treasury tool, and a retail investor cannot get access to it. A tokenized deposit is a bank deposit recorded on a ledger, so it remains a claim on the bank that issued it. That sets it apart from a stablecoin, a token backed by a smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool of reserves rather than held as a deposit at a bank. HSBC has both kinds of project in hand: its RedCoin stablecoin in PayMe is aimed at consumers in Hong Kong, while this test was for a corporate client in the US.
The nearest date for more detail is Hong Kong FinTech Week, from 2 to 6 November, where HSBC is on the stablecoin agenda. Nothing published ties the Uber pilot to that event.