AFME and EACT Tell Corporate Treasurers Tokenisation Is Now Operational
Key points
- AFME and EACT jointly published a report arguing that DLT and tokenisation should be treated as near-term operational tools for corporate treasury, not experimental capital markets infrastructure.
- The report identifies cross-border payments, collateral mobility, intraday liquidity, and tokenised fixed income as the areas offering the clearest payoffs today.
- Major banks have launched tokenised deposit solutions enabling 24/7 cash positioning and liquidity pooling, with tokenised money market funds from BlackRock, JP Morgan, State Street, and BNP Paribas now available for intraday, programmable investment.
- Global DLT-based fixed income issuance reached EUR 1.69 billion by end-2025, a 629% increase from 2021 levels, with Siemens identified as the most visible corporate issuer.
- Coverage across ten areas of corporate finance, combined with the backing of two major industry associations, signals that institutional framing of tokenisation has shifted from exploration to near-term implementation.
A joint report from the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and the European Association of Corporate Treasurers (EACT) contends that distributed ledger technology has moved past capital markets experimentation and is now actionable for corporate treasury teams. The paper maps applications across ten areas of corporate finance, covering cross-border payments, collateral management, bond issuance, trade finance, and private credit, with the clearest near-term returns identified in cross-border payments, collateral mobility, intraday liquidity, and tokenised fixed income.
On the liquidity side, the report notes that major banks have already launched tokenised deposit solutions that allow corporates to position cash around the clock and pool it centrally. Those pools can be swept into tokenised money market funds from providers including BlackRock, JP Morgan, State Street, and BNP Paribas, enabling yield on surplus cash on an intraday and programmable basis rather than an overnight lock-up.
In fixed income, global issuance of distributed ledger technology-based instruments reached EUR 1.69 billion by end-2025, a 629% increase on 2021 levels. Siemens is cited as the most prominent corporate issuer, having placed both digital bonds and commercial paper on-chain. Whether treasurers act on this report or treat it as a prompt for internal review, the direction of travel from two significant industry associations is unambiguous: DLT is no longer framed as a future capability.
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