Tokenising the Future: Manal Rifki Thinks Blockchain Isn’t Just Coming — It’s Already Reshaping Finance

If you’re still on the fence about tokenisation, Manal Rifki has one number for you: $33 trillion. That’s the scale of opportunity she sees in turning real-world assets into digital tokens — and she’s not just guessing. She’s betting her career on it.

As Director of Roaming Wholesale at Rakuten Mobile, Rifki is no stranger to scaling complex systems. She oversees international partnerships and M&A, but her influence doesn’t stop there. She’s also a venture capital investor, PhD researcher in digital assets, university lecturer, and an active speaker at global fintech and blockchain events. Think fintech meets infrastructure, with a global twist.

At a recent panel hosted by The Asian Banker, Rifki dropped insight after insight on how tokenisation is moving from theory to traction. “We’re already seeing the shift,” she said. “Institutions like BlackRock and UBS are developing tokenised funds. This is no longer sandbox play — it’s happening.”

For Rifki, tokenisation isn’t hype; it’s a structural evolution. “It’s disrupting real assets by providing liquidity, real-time settlement, and investor clarity,” she explained. That means turning things like real estate or bonds into programmable, tradeable digital assets — which can unlock entirely new financial products and efficiencies.

But Rifki’s angle is especially sharp when it comes to collaboration. She’s not cheering from the sidelines — she’s watching central banks, commercial banks, and fintechs co-create the future of digital finance. “We're seeing initiatives coming together from every corner of the ecosystem,” she said, citing the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s tokenised HKD stablecoin as a model for cross-border innovation.

Her commitment to education is just as clear. As a Digital Asset Lecturer for the Central Bank of Oman’s Fintech certificate program — part of Oman Vision 2040 — Rifki is helping prepare the next generation of financial professionals to navigate this digital transformation.

And while her résumé is stacked, she’s also refreshingly accessible — riffing on Instagram, sparking ideas on X (formerly Twitter), and showing up at global conferences as both an expert and educator.

So when Manal Rifki says tokenisation is the infrastructure layer for the next era of finance — you listen. She’s not just theorizing the future. She’s already helping build it.

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