Barclays Integrates Ant International’s AI FX Model

(7 May 2025 – United Kingdom) Barclays has partnered with Ant International to deploy the fintech firm’s proprietary Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI FX Model, designed to help businesses mitigate foreign exchange costs and navigate global currency fluctuations more effectively.

Ant International’s TST Model is built on advanced transformer architecture and processes vast datasets with nearly two billion parameters. Leveraging time series forecasting algorithms, the model is designed to identify and predict patterns in cash flow and FX exposure.

As part of the early phase of this partnership, the two companies have already completed a series of intra-group FX transactions using the TST model. The system now provides FX exposure forecasts on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis, delivering accuracy above 90 percent. This improvement allows Barclays to lower hedging costs, while enabling Ant International to reinvest savings into offering more competitive FX rates for its clients.

Barclays has now embedded the model into its FX hedging platform, BARX NetFX, a solution tailored to the needs of the e-commerce and payments sectors.

“Ant International has been a valued and long-standing partner of Barclays, and we were thrilled to work together on this innovative solution,” said Ben Parkinson, Head of Global Fintech & FX Automation Sales at Barclays. “Their state-of-the-art AI model has improved the accuracy of forecasting cash flows and helped us optimise the FX hedging process. By combining Ant International’s advanced AI forecasting capabilities with our market-leading FX expertise, we’ve been able to reduce uncertainty and cost, setting a new benchmark for FX risk management.”

Currently, the model supports major currency pairs used by Ant International, but both firms are working to extend coverage to additional currencies and use cases.

“This collaboration is a strong testament to how Barclays is dedicated to evolving alongside our partners, by harnessing our complementary strengths to enhance our offerings and deliver more impactful solutions,” added Pushkaraj Gumaste, Head of Corporate Banking, Asia Pacific & Middle East at Barclays.