RBI to launch pilot for certificate of deposit tokenisation

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch a pilot on certificate of deposit tokenisation on October 8, a top official said at the Global Fintech Fest on Monday.

This will enable creation of digital representations of assets such as certificate of deposits, stocks, and bonds that are stored on a blockchain.

The RBI’s Chief General Manager, Suvendu Pati, said the pilot will employ the wholesale segment of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) as the underlying layer for the exercise. The RBI is collaborating with “a few banks” on the project.


“From a regulatory standpoint for tokenisation of an underlying asset, we believe integrity and enforceability have to be established,” Pati said. “Risks in asset tokenisation are manageable and can be addressed through regulatory guardrails.”

He stated that the central bank is also exploring experiments with tokenisation in money market instruments.

Digital tokenisation is known to make transactions faster, cheaper, and safer. Tokenisation, in a financial context, refers to representing a real-world financial asset in digital form (a “token”) on a secure ledger (often blockchain or distributed ledger technology).

In the case of certificate of deposit tokenisation, deposits held at banks would be represented as tokens, which can then be used, transferred, or settled more fluidly across systems.