PwC and Xalts announce joint business relationship

The agreement aims to promote tokenised, programmable assets and other Blockchain technology applications in financial services

Hong Kong, 2 May 2024 – PwC China (‘PwC’) has announced today that it has entered into a joint business relationship with Xalts in Hong Kong, a provider of infrastructure for tokenised, programmable assets. Xalts helps financial institutions to implement tokenisation and programmable asset applications in an efficient and scalable way, without needing to build their own technology from scratch. 

“This agreement allows PwC and Xalts to explore business opportunities within the blockchain and tokenisation space,” says Peter Brewin, Partner, PwC China. “PwC sees enormous potential for programmable assets to deliver important innovations for the financial services industry, including wholesale payments and trade finance.”

Xalts is a financial technology and infrastructure firm founded by former HSBC and Meta executives, Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur. Xalts’ technology infrastructure comprises modular application studios which combine smart contract libraries compatible with multiple blockchains with no-code workflow orchestration and design. This enables financial institutions to compose bespoke solutions that connect multiple off-chain systems and processes with on-chain solutions. The hybrid nature of the solution has enabled financial services clients to implement production-ready solutions that are regulatory compliant and do not require a lot of upfront investment to get started. 

The collaboration between PwC and Xalts comes as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) launches Project Ensemble – a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) pilot. This follows the HKMA’s testing of a retail CBDC in May 2023 and the recent announcement of a stablecoin issuer sandbox.

Ashutosh Goel, CEO of Xalts, says: “As velocity of money accelerates with real-time payments and stable coins/CBDCs, the biggest challenge to wholesale adoption will be disjointed operational processes and systems. Real time money is not very useful if the operational process of the other leg of the transaction is manual. Our infrastructure solves this problem without requiring a large upfront cost and time commitment from clients.”
   

Notes to editors

About Xalts
Xalts is a financial technology and infrastructure company backed by Accel and Citi Ventures. The company has offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, UAE and UK. To learn more about Xalts, visit https://xalts.io/.