HSBC, the British bank, and Ant Digital Technologies ran a technical trial in which AI agents found digital services and paid for them in small amounts. The payments used HSBC's tokenized deposits, which are bank deposits recorded as tokens on a blockchain. Cointelegraph reported the test on Oct 9, 2026.
In the trial, transactions settled in real time and risk checks were applied to them. Everything ran on a blockchain testnet, not a live network. It was a test of the system, not a product launch.
The report does not name the testnet. It also does not say how many payments were made, what the payments were worth, which services the agents used, or whether either company plans to offer this to customers. None of that is known from the source.
For anyone already holding a perpetual position on Bitget, Bybit, MEXC or OKX, this changes nothing directly. The source names no exchange and no perpetual market, and it gives no reason to expect a change in funding rates, trading fees or order-book liquidity on any of them. It was a testnet trial with bank deposits, kept separate from the derivatives markets this site measures.
Source: cointelegraph — HSBC, Ant Digital test AI-agent payments using tokenized deposits