Citi is one of the biggest financial institutions in the world, with operations in over 90 countries and trillions in assets. In 2023, Citi launched Citi Token Services for Cash, an internal blockchain-based system to speed up the movement of funds across its own global network. The idea is not to replace banking interfaces or offer a new product to clients, but to quietly upgrade the infrastructure that moves money behind the scenes.
This initiative came out of a broader push by Citi to rethink liquidity and funding in a world where businesses operate across time zones and expect real-time payments, including during nights, weekends, and holidays.
What’s wrong with traditional banking?
Treasury teams (aka the people who move money around inside big companies) have one job: make sure the right amount of cash is in the right place at the right time. Sounds simple. But it’s not.
If a company operates across 10+ countries, with different currencies, cut-off times, bank holidays, etc., cash becomes hard to manage. You often end up keeping “just-in-case” buffers in different accounts. It works, but it’s inefficient and locks up capital.
Now consider this new reality: payments are happening 24/7. Refunds, payroll, trade deals, e-commerce etc.. are all outside the old-school 9-to-5 bank window. So, treasury isn’t just about moving cash anymore. It’s about real-time liquidity. And the traditional systems? Still too slow. Still too rigid. But thankfully, there is blockchain technology.
Why and how this project uses blockchain
Citi didn’t use blockchain overnight. They had been testing it for years, but weren’t ready to go live until the tech could meet compliance, privacy, and performance standards. The finance is heavily regulated, we should not forget this. Then they built something that actually made sense: an internal system using tokenized deposits to move value between Citi branches. Not externally. Not with real crypto. Just inside their own infrastructure.
They used Besu, an Ethereum-based framework designed for enterprise use. Basically, Citi gets the speed and structure of blockchain without losing control over privacy or regulation. With Besu, Citi can access Ethereum’s robust public ecosystem and tools while maintaining the stronger access controls and enhanced privacy of a private network.
Important note: clients don’t interact with any of this. No tokens, no wallets, no change to how they initiate transfers. That’s what makes this smart. The change is backend only.
So what changes now?
Let’s say a company wants to transfer funds from its US account to cover an urgent invoice in Singapore. With Citi Token Services, that can now happen any time, night, weekend, holiday, and settle almost instantly. That used to take days.
It also removes the need to pre-fund local accounts just in case something happens overnight. Less idle cash sitting around. More efficient use of capital. For bigger operations like intercompany transfers, margin calls, or emergency payments, this matters. Treasury gets to act fast. And they get real-time visibility too, which means no waiting for batch reconciliation or manual reporting.
The bigger picture: it’s part of something larger
This isn’t just a one-off. Citi is building out a broader digital assets platform (CIDAP) where all future blockchain projects will plug in. They’re not trying to create a new financial system. They’re updating the one they already run. Quietly, piece by piece.
In 2024, this initiative got industry recognition (Celent’s Model Bank Award for Digital Asset Innovation). But more importantly, it’s working. It’s live. And it’s already processing transactions in production, not in a test lab.
Image retrieved from lfdecentralizedtrust.org’s case study
Image retrieved from City’s case study.
Conclusion:
There’s a lot of hype around blockchain. Most of it doesn’t go anywhere. This use case feels different because it’s simple: fix one narrow, broken part of banking. Don’t add new friction. Just make the existing system faster, leaner, and smarter. Focus on solving a real business problem rather than trying to use blockchain for the sake of it. Here, they used blockchain because it was the only solution.