As TOKEN2049 approaches, Singapore has again become a focal point for the global finance and crypto industries. On Oct. 6, OKX held its OKX NOW global product and ecosystem conference there, bringing together speakers from crypto, payments, banking and trading firms to discuss how financial services are changing and what it takes to turn that shift into products people can actually use.
Opening the event, OKX CEO and founder Star Xu outlined the company’s next step: moving from crypto trading toward a global fintech platform covering funds, payments, trading and asset management for next-generation users.
Xu said the intersection of the internet, crypto and AI creates room for financial services to match the kind of digital life people already expect — connected at all times, easy to use and better tuned to individual needs. He also said technology alone is not enough. Building global financial services still requires trust, regulation, governance and local accountability. In his framing, the convergence of crypto and traditional finance brings together technical capabilities, liquidity, institutional experience and service networks, forming a base for broader financial applications.
That is the logic behind the event’s name, “NOW.” For years, globally connected markets, onchain assets, around-the-clock capital flows and AI in finance were often discussed as future concepts. OKX used the conference to focus on the point where those ideas begin to show up in products and real usage.
Product rollout spans trading, Web3, AI and money use
At the product level, OKX presented a range of tools and services it said are already in place or being expanded.
On the trading side, TradFi perpetual contracts, Pre-IPO perpetual contracts and unified tokenized stock trading were presented as part of one trading experience designed to bring crypto assets and traditional-finance-linked assets into the same interface while extending round-the-clock trading choices.
On the Web3 side, OKX Wallet, its DEX trading terminal and DeFi products were framed as a connected path for discovering, trading and managing onchain assets. ExchangeOS, meanwhile, will open shared trading infrastructure and liquidity to developers through XIP to support the creation of onchain markets, with the related spot and perpetual markets set to enter public beta soon.
For AI, the company highlighted Agent Trade Kit, OnchainOS and OKX AI as products that connect market analysis, trade execution and agent-based services. An upcoming AI Bot will let users create personalized trading strategies using natural language.
OKX Money was positioned as the product that extends digital assets into daily transfers, spending and savings.
From there, the conversation moved beyond product demos to a harder question: if the future of finance is already starting to take shape, what still needs to be built for it to work in practice?
Payments still depend on solving the last mile
One panel on the future of money brought the discussion back to a basic issue: what kind of financial experience ordinary users actually want.
OKX global managing partner and CMO Haider Rafique said people already expect internet services to be available 24/7, and naturally want financial services to work the same way. But for users outside the industry, wallet addresses, seed phrases, gas fees and multiple blockchain networks still amount to a difficult language. What users want more directly, he said, is to use their money easily, send it to friends or pay for something without friction.
OKX Money, a standalone app, is built around that use case. It runs on X Layer and uses self-custodial smart accounts to link transfers, spending, savings and asset management. According to the company, it is already available in more than 30 countries. Serving broader day-to-day money needs beyond trading has also become a key topic in OKX’s discussions with payment partners.
Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard, added the payment-network view. When consumers tap a card for transit or shop online, he said, they do not need to understand the banking rails, foreign exchange conversion or settlement processes operating in the background. Even if the rails change in the future, simple user experience and trusted execution will still matter.
A cross-border payment example made the point more concrete. Sending money from Dubai to the Philippines is not solved by onchain transfer speed alone. If the recipient needs pesos, then local 24/7 liquidity, competitive foreign exchange rates and compliance support on both ends of the payment all have to be in place. Only when those pieces are connected does the transfer truly reach a user’s daily life.
Haider said OKX’s current work with Mastercard is centered on card products. Raj said that as OKX expands from trading accounts toward more general-purpose money accounts, the two sides are also studying payment acceptance, payouts and agentic commerce, including how AI agents could pay for services and receive income.
The discussion around programmable money and global payments was framed not as theory, but as execution across those specific links in the chain. For end users, the more complete the coordination behind the scenes, the easier money becomes to use.
24/7 markets require stronger liquidity and operational depth
Another panel turned to what happens after markets stop closing: how liquidity, risk and infrastructure need to adapt when trading runs at all hours.
The speakers said longer trading hours create practical demands well beyond matching orders for more time. For market makers and trading firms, a 24/7 market means handing risk across regions, managing margin over weekends and maintaining systems that must stay live even while upgrades and maintenance are carried out.
Tom of QRT said trading teams still have to react to macroeconomic or geopolitical developments after traditional markets close. Without the familiar reference points of live cash-market prices, institutions need to rethink how they model risk and quote markets. At the same time, the ability to move capital efficiently across wallets, sub-accounts and different trading venues can become an operational edge, one that eventually shows up in capital efficiency and quote quality.
Those issues become especially visible in products tied to traditional assets such as equities. When the underlying market is closed, new information does not stop arriving, and user demand to trade does not disappear with it. That leaves round-the-clock venues taking on more of the price-discovery role.
Jeremy of Ludisia said that shift is already underway. Some equity-linked products remain active on digital-asset trading venues even while traditional exchanges are closed. As more traders participate, information can enter prices faster and liquidity can deepen.
To support that demand, exchanges need to keep improving the underlying mechanics. The discussion covered order book depth and stable trading latency, but also more operational matters such as stock splits, reverse splits and dividends. Those corporate actions need to be handled in a more standardized and programmatic way. For institutions running larger positions, those details directly shape risk management and trading experience.
Jeremy said during the panel that OKX’s technical infrastructure had performed well. OKX said it will keep investing in engineering and core infrastructure to support growth in these markets, and that corporate-action handling remains an important product-improvement area.
That gave fuller context to the TradFi trading products, onchain trading tools and open infrastructure that OKX had presented earlier. Products may provide access, but long-term market function depends on professional participants and trading systems that can keep operating day after day.
In that sense, “Always On” was described as more than a user-facing slogan. It refers both to the experience of joining markets across time zones and to the daily operational work shared by trading venues and liquidity partners.
Banks and exchanges move closer through shared user demand
The conference then turned to cooperation between banks and exchanges in money services.
Evy Theunis, managing director and head of digital assets at DBS Bank, said early tokenization efforts often started from the supply side: putting a building or a bond onchain one by one without necessarily creating scale. Today, large trading platforms such as OKX have user bases and distribution channels that can aggregate demand across asset types, giving more categories of assets a path into tokenized markets.
Amy Tan, head of technology and innovation economy for Asia Pacific at JPMorgan, said trust, liquidity and settlement efficiency remain central to wider adoption. Banks are moving blockchain applications forward, she said, but they also need to understand what different clients actually require. Some companies already need 24/7 money services, while others are still adjusting gradually.
Luke Boland, global head of fintech client coverage at Standard Chartered, focused on settlement rails. How tokenized deposits, stablecoins and other forms of digital money interoperate will shape how quickly more real-world assets move into onchain markets, he said. Banks bring experience in treasury, liquidity and trust, and those strengths can connect with the technical and service capabilities of digital asset platforms.
Boland said the relationship has already moved beyond basic service provision. By working with exchanges such as OKX, banks can gain a deeper understanding of digital-asset demand across markets and explore custody, collateral and institutional services. Exchanges, in turn, connect users, institutions, liquidity providers and stablecoin issuers, opening a broader field for ecosystem partnerships.
David Fragale, senior managing director and head of blockchain and digital assets at Western Alliance Bank, discussed the cooperation from a technical angle. Digital asset platforms, he said, have built specialized capabilities in key management, trading systems and 24/7 operations. Working together allows banks to respond faster as enterprise demand for digital-asset services grows.
When the discussion returned to retail users, the expectations sounded more straightforward: whether usable funds are available when someone wants to enter the market on a weekend; whether different kinds of assets can be viewed and used from a familiar interface; and whether AI agents may one day help handle payments and banking tasks.
The panel also touched on lending against digital assets, starting with assets such as bitcoin, including discussions around custody, collateral haircut structures and loan-to-value arrangements. The speakers said these areas still need to progress step by step, but the topic itself showed how bank-exchange cooperation is moving into more specific customer needs.
That gave a practical counterpart to the convergence Star Xu described at the start of the event. Banks, payment networks and digital asset platforms are approaching one another with their own long-built strengths and looking for problems they can solve together.
From conference themes to everyday use
Across product announcements and ecosystem panels, OKX NOW presented a consistent message: product rollout and industry coordination are moving in parallel.
The structure on display was clear. Trading products widen access to more asset types. Web3 tools lower the barrier to using onchain services. AI products link analysis with execution. OKX Money pushes digital assets toward transfers, spending and savings. Payment partners, liquidity firms and banks add the support needed for those products to reach more settings and keep serving users over time.
“NOW” also carried a longer-term meaning at the event. The point was not just that certain tools exist today, but that they still require continued construction, local trust and services that can stand up to routine, everyday use.
In the picture OKX presented, the end result may feel small in day-to-day life rather than dramatic: a transfer that arrives smoothly over a weekend, a payment completed without needing to understand technical jargon, or the freedom to join markets at a time that suits the user.
The event itself has ended, but the products and partnerships discussed there are still moving forward. For OKX, the phrase that the future of finance is “happening now” points to what can already be delivered today, then extended with more partners into ordinary financial life.