Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], September 9 (ANI): The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is looking to expand tokenisation of financial assets by bringing more asset classes onto its digital market infrastructure, Executive Director P Vasudevan said on Wednesday.
Speaking during a fireside chat on “Tokenisation of Financial Assets” at the Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, Vasudevan said the central bank’s experience so far had provided a base for expanding the use of tokenisation.
“Unified markets interface has been a good launch pad. We are hopeful to add more asset classes to it, and that will actually make the ecosystem much more big,” Vasudevan said.
He said the RBI had been experimenting with such infrastructure over time and had already tested tokenisation of certificates of deposit.
“Now that we have tested success, and we have the ecosystem talking about this, we think that all of the classes can come in. And somewhere I think that we are learning in the process. Others are also learning from us in the process,” he said.
Vasudevan said tokenisation could be used across different stages of a financial transaction, including issuance, trading and settlement.
“So the tokenization can handle anything from issuance, to trading, to settlement, everyone’s resources, to services, anything and everything can be perfectly handled in a tokenized world,” he said.
He also highlighted the potential of combining tokenised financial assets with central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the same platform, allowing both the asset and payment sides of a transaction to move together.
“CBDC is the money aspect that can actually move along with the asset aspect on the single platform. That’s the power of this platform,” Vasudevan said.
However, the RBI Executive Director cautioned that the expansion of tokenisation would need to take into account issues around data, privacy and interoperability.
“Initial thoughts are there. Collections of detailed clarity, data certainty, data privacy, data movement, concept management. Those are the challenges. So, we need to be mindful of them,” he said.
He also said that if multiple platforms offered similar tokenisation services, ensuring they could work with each other would be important.
“If there are two or three platforms doing similar things, how do we actually make them interoperable? So, one of the success stories of our data ecosystem has been interoperable. So, we don’t want to lose on that,” Vasudevan said.
He added that faster movement of assets and money could also create new risks, particularly if the same assets could be leveraged several times within a short period.
“Let’s look at this from a fintech perspective but also from a stability perspective. Let’s not try to think that this is the be all and end all,” Vasudevan said.
Vasudevan said tokenisation had the potential to change how financial assets are managed, while stressing that its benefits would have to be balanced with safeguards for the financial system. (ANI)
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