Weekly briefing · Edition 19 · 7 September 2026 · covering 1 to 7 September

MAS consults on stablecoin legislation, opening the door to multi-jurisdiction issuance

Edited by Cliffton Lee · Singapore · 17 items covered from 468 sources reviewed

Key points

Twenty-one financial institutions committed on 1 September 2026 to form a company issuing a USD stablecoin for a first-half-2027 launch, taking the G-SIB count to 17 with newcomers BBVA, Wells Fargo, Crédit Agricole and Lloyds and adding asset managers Fidelity and WisdomTree, with the euro named as the priority second currency.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore consulted on turning its 2023 stablecoin framework into law on 1 September 2026, reversing its earlier bar on multi-jurisdiction issuance and probing whether to prohibit issuers from using reserve interest to finance the business, with responses due by 16 October 2026.
MUFG opened discussions with both BlackRock and Morgan Stanley Investment Management on 1 September 2026 to build open-platform collaborations in tokenised private credit, pairing Japan's largest tokenised-securities operator with the two biggest names in institutional private credit.
South Korea's FSC is targeting a February 2027 launch for a full tokenised securities market, with Koscom's KoSTO platform signing 12 securities firms and the revised securities law recognising tokenised securities on distributed ledgers as equivalent to conventional securities from 4 February 2027.
The Reserve Bank of Australia opened a consultation closing 30 October 2026 on synchronising DLT settlement with its RITS and FSS real-time gross settlement systems, and on letting wholesale stablecoin issuers back tokens with central bank reserves, drawing directly on Project Acacia trial findings.

Asia moved on the policy layer in parallel, MAS converting its 2023 stablecoin framework into law and reversing its multi-jurisdiction bar, South Korea fixing February 2027 for a full tokenised securities market, and MUFG opening tokenised private-credit talks with both BlackRock and Morgan Stanley in the same day.

What's new in Asia

MAS consults on stablecoin legislation, opening the door to multi-jurisdiction issuance ↗
Singapore
MAS proposes amending the Payment Services Act to make its 2023 stablecoin framework binding law, and the headline shift is a reversal on multi-jurisdiction issuance, so a stablecoin issued concurrently from Singapore and abroad can now carry the MAS-regulated label provided the foreign issuer sits under a substantively equivalent regime. The companion draft would prohibit issuers using customer monies and reserve interest to materially finance the business, MAS itself flags the tension since reserve interest is the primary revenue line for standalone issuers, and asks whether the prohibition is needed at all, with responses due 16 October 2026.
What this means
Product ownerstablecoin
the multi-jurisdiction reversal removes the structural reason a global issuer would keep its Singapore entity walled off from its offshore programme, so map which of your existing foreign licences would clear the substantive-equivalence test before the consultation closes. The proposed ban on financing the business from reserve interest cuts at the core unit economics, and the yield question is exactly the number to model across both a full-ban and a calibrated-carve-out scenario.
Regulatory & policy affairs
MAS now sits alongside the UK's BoE-FCA framework and the EU's MiCA regime as a binding reference regime rather than a guidance-stage one, and its equivalence path is the operational lever for cross-border recognition. Track how MAS defines substantive equivalence, since that definition sets whether a GENIUS-authorised or MiCA-authorised issuer can passport its label into Singapore.
Bank of Korea study finds dollar-backed stablecoins can push local currencies lower ↗
South Korea
The Bank of Korea's substantive research argues that dollar-backed stablecoins can exert downward pressure on local currencies, a central-bank framing that lands as Korea prepares its own tokenised securities and stablecoin architecture. This is the monetary-sovereignty argument that shapes whether Korean policy leans toward a won-denominated stablecoin rather than tolerating USD stablecoin penetration, and it reads against Visa's recent OpenUSD and Shinhan partnerships as the counterweight.
What this means
Regulatory & policy affairs
a central bank publishing a currency-substitution finding is the analytical groundwork for restricting or channelling USD stablecoin flows, so weigh whether a KRW-denominated issuance strategy becomes the regulator-preferred path in Korea rather than a defensive one. Read this against the February 2027 securities-market timeline, since the settlement layer for tokenised assets will need a designated cash leg and the study signals the BoK wants that leg to be won.
Product ownerstablecoin
the study reframes a USD stablecoin play in Korea as a policy risk rather than a distribution opportunity, and the assumption to test is whether onshore access survives contact with a central bank that has published its currency concern in writing.
MUFG opens tokenised private-credit talks with BlackRock and Morgan Stanley in the same day ↗
Japan
MUFG announced discussions with both BlackRock and Morgan Stanley Investment Management on 1 September 2026 to build open-platform collaborations in tokenised private credit, pairing Japan's largest bank with the two biggest names in institutional private credit on the same day. These are proposal-stage dialogues rather than binding partnerships, but the open-platform framing and MUFG's ownership of Progmat, Japan's largest tokenised-securities operator now migrated to Avalanche, signal an ambition to be the settlement and issuance layer for private credit distributed into Japanese institutional balance sheets.
What this means
Distribution & BD
MUFG is positioning Progmat as the onshore rail for foreign-originated private credit reaching Japanese allocators, so revisit whether your private-credit distribution into Japan should route through a Progmat-native wrapper rather than a conventional fund feeder. The open-platform language matters because it suggests MUFG wants multiple asset managers on one venue, which changes the competitive calculus for anyone building a single-manager tokenised private-credit channel into the same investor base.
Product ownertokenised private credit
two of the largest private-credit franchises exploring the same Japanese venue on the same day is a signal that tokenised private credit is consolidating around bank-operated platforms rather than manager-owned ones, and the question to test is whether your issuance economics still work as a participant on someone else's rail.
FSC targets February 2027 for a full tokenised securities market as Koscom's KoSTO signs 12 firms ↗
South Korea
Korea's FSC is targeting a February 2027 launch for a full tokenised securities market, and Korea Exchange subsidiary Koscom has expanded its KoSTO platform to 12 committed securities firms, up from 7 a year ago. KoSTO integrates with securities firms' back offices and the Korea Securities Depository, which is building a blockchain system to reconcile issuances across multiple chains, and the revised securities law that comes into force on 4 February 2027 recognises tokenised securities and bonds on distributed ledgers as equivalent to conventional securities while letting licensed intermediaries handle OTC trading of fractional real-world assets such as real estate and music.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
KoSTO is the shared-infrastructure answer for mid-size Korean securities firms that cannot justify building their own tokenisation stack, so if you are a smaller intermediary, the build-versus-join decision now has a concrete platform and a February 2027 deadline attached. The KSD cross-chain reconciliation layer is the piece to watch, since it determines whether multi-chain issuance stays coherent at the depository level.
Product ownertokenised equity
legislative equivalence from 4 February 2027 removes the wrapper ambiguity that has kept Korean tokenised securities in pilot mode, and the OTC-fractional-RWA provision opens real estate and music-royalty structures as issuable asset classes, so start mapping which of your product ideas actually clear the licensed-intermediary requirement.
RBA consults on DLT settlement synchronisation and central-bank-backed stablecoins ↗
Australia
The Reserve Bank of Australia opened a consultation, closing 30 October 2026, that primarily explores synchronising a DLT platform with the existing RITS and FSS real-time gross settlement systems to settle tokenised transactions in central bank money, with a forward-looking section on stablecoin issuers using central bank reserves to back wholesale tokens. Much of the thinking is drawn from Project Acacia, and the RBA flags a live legal gap the trials exposed, since under the RITS Regulations an ESA holder acts as principal with no legal separation between a stablecoin issuer's earmarked reserves and the bank's own funds, so an issuer's backing would be indistinguishable from the bank's reserves if the bank failed.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
the RITS principal-not-trustee problem the RBA names is exactly the bankruptcy-remoteness gap that decides whether a wholesale stablecoin's reserves survive its custodian bank's failure, so re-examine the insolvency assumptions on any AUD-denominated tokenised instrument that relies on bank-held central bank reserves. The synchronisation model matters because settling on-DLT against RITS finality changes the intraday liquidity profile versus a stablecoin cash leg.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the RBA is signalling it may extend central bank reserve access to wholesale stablecoin issuers, which would be a structural shift in the AUD stablecoin race, and the assumption to test is whether that access stays wholesale-only or eventually reaches retail-facing issuers.
MUFG to acquire DLT-based superannuation administrator GROW Inc ↗
Japan
MUFG Pension & Market Services has entered a binding agreement to acquire GROW Technology Services, whose flagship DLTA product runs on R3's Corda Enterprise as a shared registry for superannuation fund and investor data, reportedly for around AUD 78 million (US$56 million), roughly a third of GROW's valuation a year earlier. The Corda link is notable because MUFG founded Progmat on Corda before migrating it to Avalanche last month, so MUFG buys a production DLT pension-administration platform on technology it already knows deeply, subject to regulatory, shareholder and court approvals.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
MUFG is acquiring a live DLT registry in regulated pension administration rather than piloting one, which is a signal that distributed-ledger record-keeping for long-tail regulated products is passing the buy-versus-build threshold at a GSIB. The discounted price is worth noting as context, since it suggests standalone DLT-native administrators may struggle to reach scale without a bank parent.
KB Kookmin Bank becomes first in Korea to use Kinexys Blockchain Deposit Accounts ↗
South Korea
KB Kookmin Bank is now using JPMorgan's Kinexys Blockchain Deposit Account network for import and export payments, the first Korean adoption of the tokenised-deposit rail. This is incremental client onboarding rather than a structural expansion of Kinexys itself, but it extends the multi-currency tokenised-deposit backbone into a major Korean bank's trade-finance flow and gives Korean corporates a 24/7 settlement path that bypasses the correspondent-banking hop.
What this means
Treasury & allocator
KB routing trade payments through Kinexys gives Korean corporate treasuries a near-instant cross-border settlement option for import and export flows, so revisit whether your correspondent-banking assumptions on Korea-linked trade legs still hold when a tokenised-deposit rail sits inside a domestic bank relationship.

Global news

Payments & settlement

17 G-SIBs and 4 institutions commit to launch a USD stablecoin company ↗
EU
Twenty-one financial institutions committed on 1 September 2026 to establish a company issuing a USD stablecoin for a first-half-2027 launch, expanding the exploratory group announced last October from 10 banks to 18 banks plus 2 asset managers and Abu Dhabi's Sirius International Holding, with the euro named as the priority second currency. The 13 newcomers change the group's character, since the original membership was exclusively G-SIBs and the roster now adds BBVA, Capital One, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Lloyds, PNC, Scotiabank, Rabobank, Wells Fargo and Standard Bank, while Fidelity and WisdomTree join despite already issuing their own FIDD and USDW coins, a tell that the industry has concluded no single institution's coin achieves sufficient network effects. Use cases span wholesale, institutional and retail, and the euro-priority line reads directly against the ECB's Pontes timeline and the EU's push for a MiCA-native EUR settlement asset.
What this means
Product ownerstablecoin
a jointly owned bank coin with 17 G-SIBs behind it is the network-effects answer that individual bank stablecoins could not reach, so if you run a standalone or single-bank issuance, revisit whether your distribution thesis survives a consortium coin that arrives with 18 banks' client bases attached. The presence of Fidelity and WisdomTree, both already issuing, raises the open question of whether either firm's regulated entity ends up serving the group, and that is the structural detail to watch as the company incorporates in the second half of this year.
Treasury & allocator
a G-SIB-issued USD stablecoin arriving in the first half of 2027 changes the counterparty profile of a stablecoin cash position from a fintech issuer to a bank consortium, so re-price the credit and settlement assumptions in any cash-management mandate that currently excludes stablecoins on issuer-risk grounds. The euro-priority commitment means a EUR settlement asset is on the same roadmap, which is the number to plan for if your book runs multi-currency.
Regulatory & policy affairs
a consortium spanning US, EU, UK and Japanese G-SIBs will need to clear GENIUS Act authorisation, MiCA, the BoE-FCA regime and, on the euro leg, ECB scrutiny simultaneously, so the coordination question is which jurisdiction's authorisation the company anchors to first. The euro-priority framing directly engages the ECB's stated preference for a euro settlement asset, and how the consortium sequences its euro coin against Pontes is the cross-border read to carry.
Distribution & BD
the newcomer list, heavy on retail and commercial banks like Wells Fargo, Capital One and Lloyds, signals the consortium is targeting retail and institutional distribution rather than wholesale-only, so reassess whether your own stablecoin distribution partnerships are competing with a coin that arrives pre-embedded in those banks' channels.
US tokenised deposit network Cari raises $32.5 million entirely from banks ↗
US
Cari, the tokenised deposit network targeting regional, mid-size and community banks, raised the first tranche of its funding round entirely from banks, with Glacier Bank joining the six original design partners including First Horizon, Huntington, KeyBank, M&T, Old National and SouthState, so 30 banks are now members with another 40 in active discussions. The build reached minimum viable product at end-March with a full product suite delivered in July, covering programmability, wallets and a mint-transfer-burn portal, and it remains pre-production, which positions Cari as the shared-infrastructure answer for banks below G-SIB scale that cannot justify building tokenised deposits alone.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
Cari is the consortium play for the tier of US banks that Kinexys and the G-SIB stablecoin group do not serve, so if you sit in that tier, the build-versus-join calculus now has a bank-owned network with 30 members and a delivered product suite to weigh against. The all-bank cap table matters because it signals member banks want control of the rail rather than dependence on a fintech vendor.
Founder & strategy
a tokenised-deposit network funded entirely by its own bank members is a different competitive animal from a venture-backed one, and the strategic read is whether the community-bank segment consolidates around Cari before an independent challenger can reach it.
BNP Paribas and ABN AMRO join the CBMT deposit-token sandbox as the German initiative goes European ↗
EU
BNP Paribas, the Eurozone's largest bank by assets, has joined the Commercial Bank Money Token sandbox and ABN AMRO now appears among participants, turning a largely German consortium of Commerzbank, DZ Bank, Helaba, UniCredit, Siemens and Evonik into a European one. CBMT is not a single shared token, since each bank issues its own deposit token and the unifying layer is the CBMT Bridge built on UDPN messaging that handles interbank settlement and issues tokens natively onto the corporate DLT networks where the assets sit, and BaFin's classification of CBMT as a deposit rather than an e-money token keeps it outside MiCA, though each new bank must clear its own national supervisor.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
CBMT's each-bank-issues-its-own-token model with a shared bridge is the interoperability pattern to study, since it lets a deposit-token network scale across jurisdictions without a single common issuer, and BNP Paribas joining validates it at Eurozone-systemic scale. The per-supervisor clearance requirement is the friction point, so map which national regulators sit between your bank and CBMT participation.
Product ownertokenised deposit
DZ Bank's framing of CBMT as a tokenised SEPA extension capable of handling all currencies is the strategic direction, so weigh whether your deposit-token roadmap should target CBMT-Bridge compatibility rather than a proprietary standard. The BaFin deposit-not-EMT classification is the regulatory precedent that keeps this out of MiCA, and it is worth testing whether your own supervisor would reach the same conclusion.
Citi, Goldman and other global banks team up on a stablecoin venture ↗
US
This is the same 1 September consortium reported from the banks' side, confirming Citi and Goldman Sachs among the 21 institutions forming the USD stablecoin company for a first-half-2027 launch. The detail this adds is the US-desk framing of scope, which remains early-stage with the company itself yet to incorporate, so the operational commitment is directional rather than a live product.
What this means
Compliance, legal & risk
with incorporation targeted for the second half of this year and no product live yet, the governance and reserve-management model of the joint company is still open, so the question to get ahead of is which entity holds the reserves and how the insolvency waterfall works across 21 owners.

Issuance & funds

Citi issues a tokenised structured note bought by Banco do Brasil ↗
US
Banco do Brasil, majority state-owned, invested $5 million on 19 August 2026 in a note from Citi's digitally native structured-note programme on Euroclear's D-FMI tokenisation platform, describing it as a first for a Latin American institution and putting its own proprietary treasury capital in rather than acting for clients. Citi issued through its Luxembourg entity with its London branch as issuing and paying agent, and the underlying reference asset was not disclosed, so this is operational capital commitment to tokenised issuance from a major regional bank rather than a logo on a press release.
What this means
Treasury & allocator
a state-owned bank committing proprietary treasury capital to a tokenised note on D-FMI is the institutional-adoption signal that matters, so revisit whether your own treasury mandate still treats tokenised structured notes as ineligible when a peer has put balance sheet behind one. The undisclosed reference asset is a gap worth pressing on, since the wrapper's transparency is part of the diligence.
Product ownertokenised bond
Citi routing issuance through its Luxembourg entity with a London paying agent is the reusable legal template for cross-border tokenised structured notes, and the fact that a Latin American buyer cleared it suggests the D-FMI wrapper travels across regulatory perimeters more easily than expected.

Regulatory & licensing

SEC proposes overhauling transfer-agent rules and asks whether shareholder name and address are needed ↗
US
The SEC's first substantive rewrite of transfer-agent rules since the early 1980s runs to more than 400 pages and, as Commissioner Peirce flagged, buries a question with real weight for tokenisation, namely whether someone who has never provided a name or mailing address can be a registered holder of a US security, or whether an email and wallet address could suffice. Today a direct registered shareholder is a name and address on the master securityholder file, requiring identification and tax information up front, while offshore synthetic tokenised stocks already run the stablecoin model that only checks identity at mint and burn, and the SEC is probing in several ways whether a similar onshore model is viable, though it did not include one in the draft.
What this means
Compliance, legal & risk
the SEC opening the door to wallet-address registered holders would collapse a foundational identity requirement for US securities, so the question to get ahead of is how your KYC and tax-reporting stack would function if the registered-holder record became a wallet rather than a name. This is a consultation probe rather than a rule, so the read is directional, but the direction is toward the stablecoin identity model onshore.
Product ownertokenised equity
an onshore path to wallet-based registered holders would let tokenised US equities trade in DeFi venues the way offshore synthetics already do, which reshapes the addressable structure for issuer-sponsored tokens, so start mapping which of your product assumptions depend on the current name-and-address master file.
Russia's digital ruble goes live with a privacy problem ↗
Global
Russia's retail CBDC entered its first production phase this week, requiring the 22 largest banks and retailers with turnover above $1.4 million to support it, with the compulsory net widening over the next one to two years and every wallet linked directly to a citizen's state identity. Early bank-service glitches and no Apple support are the surface story, but the consequential design point is that the digital ruble reshapes what the state can see in every payment, a surveillance architecture that stands in deliberate contrast to the privacy-preserving designs Western wholesale CBDC and deposit-token projects have pursued.
What this means
Regulatory & policy affairs
the digital ruble is the reference case for a CBDC built with identity-linked full visibility rather than tiered privacy, so it is the counter-model to cite when arguing design choices in jurisdictions still consulting, and it sharpens the privacy question every retail CBDC proposal now has to answer.

Infrastructure & custody

ICE invests in tZERO and names it the second digital transfer agent for the NYSE tokenised platform ↗
US
tZERO will become a design partner for the NYSE-affiliated Digital Trading Platform's digital transfer-agent and broker-dealer infrastructure and is expected to be designated an approved digital transfer agent once regulatory and operational requirements are met, with ICE investing in tZERO's latest round and licensing its blockchain patent portfolio, while the two firms will also evaluate tZERO tokenised assets for collateral at ICE's clearing houses. Naming tZERO as the second transfer agent after Securitize, designated in March, is the structural signal, since integrating more than one transfer-agent format puts the NYSE in a position to set standards and tells issuers the venue is not captive to a single tokenisation provider.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
a second designated digital transfer agent means the NYSE venue is standardising across formats rather than locking to one provider, so if you are building tokenised-issuance infrastructure, the integration target is a multi-transfer-agent standard the NYSE is now shaping. The collateral-at-clearing-house evaluation is the piece to watch, since it would put tZERO tokenised assets into ICE's clearing waterfall.
Collateral & funding desk
ICE evaluating tZERO tokenised assets as collateral at its clearing houses is the early signal that tokenised securities are being assessed for the cleared-margin stack, so start working through the haircut and eligibility questions before a clearing house proposes it.
London Stock Exchange to support xStocks tokenised stock trading in a Payward deal ↗
UK
Payward, Kraken's parent, will issue the 100 largest London-listed companies as xStocks and, subject to regulatory approval, list them on the LSE's 24/5 venue LSE 24, with the two also exploring native LSE-issued equity tokens. xStocks are loan notes rather than shares, so Jersey-based Backed Assets holds the underlying as collateral and issues 1:1 tracker certificates redeeming in cash or crypto, a framework that has passed $40 billion in cumulative volume across more than 200,000 holders in just over a year.
What this means
Product ownertokenised equity
the loan-note structure gives holders a claim against the issuer rather than shareholder rights, which is the design choice that keeps tokenised UK equities tradeable in DeFi venues, so weigh whether that trade-off fits your product before adopting the tracker-certificate model. Regulatory approval is the gate here, so the timeline is contingent rather than fixed.
Distribution & BD
LSE 24 becoming an overnight venue for tokenised exposure to NYSE, Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse and HKEX names, none of them party to the venue, extends distribution reach to more than 110 countries, so reassess whether your cross-border equity distribution should route through a tokenised-tracker channel that the underlying exchanges do not control.
Broadridge extends its DLT repo solution from US Treasuries to G7 securities ↗
US
Broadridge's distributed-ledger repo platform processed around $7.4 trillion in transactions last month, up from $5.9 trillion a year earlier and $1.5 trillion two years ago on US Treasury collateral alone, and it is now adding support for other G7 securities. A major use case has been big banks positioning liquidity in international subsidiaries via intragroup repo, where local securities are often simpler than US Treasuries, and Broadridge notes DTC's tokenisation goes into production in October with its Collateral AppChain in Q4, so the competitive frame is a first-mover against a DTC Goliath that Broadridge partners with.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
G7 collateral support means intragroup repo for international subsidiaries can now use local securities on the DLT rail rather than converting to US Treasuries, so re-examine whether your cross-border liquidity-positioning trades can run natively on Broadridge as collateral scope widens. DTC's October production launch is the competitive event to watch, since it changes which platform anchors tokenised collateral at scale.

Worth watching next

Whether the 21-institution stablecoin company incorporates on schedule in the second half of 2026, and which regulated entity, potentially Fidelity’s or WisdomTree‘s, ends up serving the group’s issuance.
How MAS defines substantive equivalence in its stablecoin consultation closing 16 October 2026, since that definition sets whether GENIUS-authorised and MiCA-authorised issuers can passport their label into Singapore.
Whether MUFG’s tokenised private-credit talks with BlackRock and Morgan Stanley convert from proposal-stage dialogue into binding Progmat-native issuance, and which asset manager lists first.
The RBA consultation closing 30 October 2026 on synchronising DLT settlement with RITS and FSS, and whether it moves toward granting wholesale stablecoin issuers central bank reserve access.

Forward

Forward this to one person who should be reading it.

Editorially independent. Not investment advice.