09-17-2026 
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Tokenization is increasingly moving beyond the pilot stage and into the day-to-day of traditional finance (TradFi), as financial institutions and regulators explore how blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can make the issuance, settlement, and movement of value faster and more efficient.
- India unveils ‘Demat 2.0’ bond pilot
- Global finance embraces tokenization
- Tokenized deposits gain ground in Singapore
- Deepening digital finance push
Two developments in Asia last week highlight that shift, with India launching a live pilot for tokenized corporate bonds, while Singapore’s three largest domestic banks completed live interbank transactions using tokenized deposits.
India’s tokenized bond pilot
India’s securities regulator and central bank have launched a tokenized corporate bond pilot, known as “Demat 2.0”, with three companies issuing a combined 10.25 billion rupees (about $108 million) through the new market infrastructure.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) announced the pilot on September 9, saying it would allow corporate bonds to be issued and held as digital tokens on a distributed ledger owned by the country’s statutory depositories.
The bond is created as a digital token on a distributed ledger operated by India’s securities depositories and other market infrastructure institutions, with asset servicing, including interest payments and redemption, handled automatically through smart contracts—instructions written into the ledger that execute on their own.
The Demat 2.0 infrastructure is connected to India’s wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee (e₹), through Unified Market Interface (UMI) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central banking and monetary authority, which enables atomic settlement—whereby asset delivery and payment occur simultaneously, which allows the securities and funds legs to settle simultaneously rather than through a conventional settlement interval that can take up to three days.
According to the two regulators, Demat 2.0 was developed to test a new way of issuing, holding, trading, and settling corporate bonds, with the pair listing several key expected benefits, including a reduction in the cost of issuance and servicing for the issuer, as manual processes are automated; less file sharing, reconciliation, validations for the market intermediaries; eliminating settlement risk, thanks to atomic settlement; and interest and redemption payments being credited in CBDC to the bondholders’ digital wallets on the due date, triggered automatically by smart contract.
“Taken together, these features are expected to make the issue, settlement and servicing of corporate bonds faster, more efficient and less error‑prone,” said the SEBI and RBI. “Thus, the technology improves the efficiency of transactions in securities market.”
Other jurisdictions worldwide have explored the technology, such as Project Helvetia III in Switzerland, a live pilot project by the Swiss National Bank that issues wholesale CBDC on a regulated third-party DLT, and platform Project Evergreen in Hong Kong, an initiative launched by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in 2021 to explore and advance the use of tokenization and DLT in capital markets. Meanwhile, in the private sector, financial giants such as BlackRock (NASDAQ: BLK) and JPMorgan (NASDAQ: JPM) are exploring DLT and tokenized U.S. Treasury products to modernize institutional cash management and market settlement.
However, the RBI and SEBI claimed that Demat 2.0 is the first instance combining native DLT issuance, a statutory depository’s ownership record, and CBDC-based settlement within existing regulated market infrastructure.
According to their press release, three companies have already issued tokenised bonds, aggregating 10.25 billion rupees (around $108 million): government-owned financier REC was the first issuer, on September 7, 2026, raising 5 billion rupees ($52 million) from 18 investors; Indian multinational L&T Limited was the second issuer, on September 9, raising 5 billion rupees ($52 million) from four investors; and IIFL Finance, a private non-banking financial company, was the third issuer, raising 250 million rupees ($2.61 million) from one investor, also on September 9.
The rollout is larger than an earlier plan reported in August, which envisaged an issuance of less than 5 billion rupees ($52 million), solely by REC.
Beyond the initial issuances, the RBI and SEBI said the project will be taken forward in phases, with issuances under the first phase ongoing, and later phases introducing secondary trading through existing request-for-quote platforms and extending access to retail investors.
“The experience gained will guide any wider rollout,” said the regulators.
While India is applying tokenization to securities issuance and settlement, Singapore is taking a complementary approach by putting tokenized money to work in the payments system.
The result is another example of blockchain infrastructure being tested not as a replacement for the existing financial system, but as an extension of it, connecting regulated digital assets and digital money with established market infrastructure.Singapore banks complete live tokenized-deposit transactions
DBS, OCBC, and UOB, the “big three” of Singapore’s domestic banking, have collaborated to complete their first live domestic Singapore-dollar interbank transactions using tokenized deposits on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger.
According to a joint announcement published by DBS on September 10, the live transactions were conducted through the exchange of payment messages between the banks using Swift’s ledger. The resulting obligations were recorded as tokenized deposit obligations on the respective banks’ infrastructures, while Swift’s blockchain-based ledger acted as an orchestration layer.
This marks a significant milestone for Singapore’s banking industry and is the first time the three Singapore banks have executed live interbank transactions using tokenized deposits—regular bank deposits in digital form that enable the efficient movement of value via blockchain or DLT.
“In a digital economy, our clients’ businesses operate round the clock, and their money should too. Our pilots prove that with tokenised deposits, clients can transact USD and SGD payments any time, any day, including over a weekend,” said Rachel Chew, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Head of Digital Assets and Global Transaction Services at DBS. “To help accelerate adoption across the industry, we will continue working with partners to develop interoperability and common standards across different ecosystems.”
The transactions follow Swift’s July 9 announcement that its blockchain-based ledger was ready for initial use, with 17 banks from six continents preparing to pilot tokenized-deposit transactions for 24/7 cross-border payments.
“With our new ledger capability, we’re extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money,” Thierry Chilosi, Chief Business Officer at Swift, said at the time. “It allows tokenized value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resiliency, security, and compliance global finance requires.”
Among the other leading global banks to pilot initial live transactions on the Swift ledger were BNP Paribas, Citi (NASDAQ: C), First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), HSBC (NASDAQ: HSBC), Lloyds Bank (NASDAQ: LYG), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo (NASDAQ: WFC).
The three Singapore banks, which were also on the list, suggested in their joint statement last week that by connecting tokenized deposit ecosystems across banks, the Swift’s ledger addressed “a critical barrier to the adoption of digital money, laying the foundation for more efficient, interoperable payment networks.”
The transactions form part of Singapore’s broader push to establish itself as a hub for regulated digital asset and financial market infrastructure.
In 2024, the country launched its “Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN),” a new fintech center designed to “further strengthen Singapore as a global FinTech hub,” by boosting digital payments, tokenization, digital assets, and artificial intelligence (AI) efforts. More recently, it doubled down on its support for innovative fintech, with the central bank proposing a tailored approach to the prudential treatment of cryptoassets that provide certain tokenized assets, stablecoins, and permissionless cryptoassets more lenient rules.
Commenting on its tokenized deposit collaboration, Carmen Chan, Deputy Head of Global Transaction Banking at OCBC, underscored this fintech hub drive: “As part of OCBC’s broader digital assets strategy, we are continuing to explore how trusted forms of digital money can enable more efficient, programmable and interoperable financial services. We are pleased to work alongside Swift and industry partners to advance innovation that strengthens Singapore’s position as a leading digital and financial hub.”
Together, last week’s developments in India and Singapore provide more evidence that tokenization is gradually becoming less about demonstrating what blockchain can do and more about integrating it into the regulated financial infrastructure already used by banks, investors, and markets.
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