SEBI plans tokenisation and DLT pilot for India's corporate bond market
Key points
- SEBI confirmed a corporate bond tokenisation and distributed ledger technology pilot in its annual report, with Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey having announced it in late May 2025 at the CareEdge Debt Market Summit.
- The pilot is scoped to run on a limited scale over a six-to-nine-month period, targeting faster settlement, operational efficiencies, smart contract programmability, and CBDC-based settlement integration.
- A secondary goal appears to be bringing greater standardisation to India's fragmented corporate bond market.
- Globally, large digital bond issuances have been dominated by sovereign, supranational, agency, and financial institution issuers; corporate examples include Siemens (€360 million across two issuances) and POSCO International's $100 million digital bond in Hong Kong.
- India's Reserve Bank of India wholesale CBDC already covers government securities settlement and certificates of deposit, and the CAT Sandbox launched in October last year provides a simulation environment that could inform the SEBI pilot's settlement architecture.
India’s Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has confirmed a pilot programme to test tokenisation and distributed ledger technology in the corporate bond market, with the intention logged in its annual report. SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey first announced the initiative in late May at the CareEdge Debt Market Summit, framing it as a limited-scale trial running over six to nine months. The stated objectives span faster settlement, operational efficiencies, programmability via smart contracts, and integration with central bank digital currency (CBDC)-based settlement mechanisms.
One underlying driver appears to be standardisation of a corporate bond market that remains relatively fragmented. That ambition sits against a global backdrop where large-scale digital bond issuances have overwhelmingly come from sovereign, supranational and agency issuers or financial institutions rather than corporates; notable exceptions include two Siemens issuances totalling €360 million and a $100 million digital bond by Korea’s POSCO International in Hong Kong.
India’s CBDC infrastructure offers a plausible settlement layer for the pilot. The Reserve Bank of India operates both retail and wholesale versions of its digital rupee, and in October last year launched the CBDC and Asset Tokenisation (CAT) Sandbox, though that facility currently runs in simulation mode only. Existing wholesale CBDC use cases cover government securities settlement, inter-bank call money market activity, and the tokenised issuance and settlement of certificates of deposit, giving SEBI a set of reference rails to draw on as the corporate bond trial takes shape.
More on the wire
- Eight more banks join China's e-CNY network as 2026 roster triples
- HSBC and Standard Chartered complete first live tokenised deposit transfer over Swift blockchain
- Citi Plans Bitcoin Custody Service for Institutional Clients Later This Year
- Citi Plans Crypto Custody Launch This Year, Starting With Bitcoin