The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is setting its sights on tokenised payments and digital settlement systems, tapping into Hong Kong’s growing digital finance ecosystem as part of a broader push to modernise its capital market operations, according to a senior official at the bank.“That is a sector that we are exploring with interest,” Domenico Nardelli, the AIIB’s treasurer and acting chief financial officer, told the South China Morning Post in an interview last week, referencing emerging financial technologies such as digital payments and tokenised settlement.The Beijing-headquartered multilateral development bank wants “to understand if there are applications that are portable into the treasury space,” he added.The interest comes as the institution aggressively scales up its global fundraising capacity. After raising the equivalent of US$10 billion in each of the past two years, the AIIB is targeting a record US$11 billion this year.Coinciding with this fundraising drive are plans to open a hub in Hong Kong before the end of the year – marking its second office outside mainland China following the launch of its Abu Dhabi hub two years ago.Establishing a physical presence in the city will place the bank at the centre of Asia’s fast-maturing digital asset market, bringing it closer to both regional clients and global pools of liquidity, Nardelli said.