SEBI to Pilot Corporate Bond Tokenisation
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- SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey announced at the Care Edge Debt Market Summit 2026 in Mumbai on Tuesday that the regulator will pilot corporate bond tokenisation to test faster settlement, traceability, automated servicing, and greater transparency.
- Tokenisation converts traditional bonds into blockchain-based digital tokens representing fractional ownership, enabling smaller ticket sizes and opening fixed-income markets previously dominated by institutions to retail investors.
- Nikhil Aggarwal, founder and Group CEO of Grip Invest, flagged quantum computing threats to blockchain cryptography and said interoperability between legacy depository systems and new blockchain infrastructure remains untested at scale.
- Prateek Gupta, head of business at Mudrex, said India still lacks a comprehensive legal framework defining ownership rights, dispute resolution, and investor protection for tokenised bonds, keeping institutional participation subdued until that's addressed.
- Corporate bonds currently settle on a T+2 cycle, but tokenisation would enable real-time blockchain settlement, freeing capital faster and reducing counterparty risk in the trade-to-settlement window, according to Gupta.
Why it matters: Retail investors gain fractional access to corporate bonds—an institutional product historically out of reach through large ticket sizes—while SEBI tests whether blockchain can compress settlement from the current T+2 cycle to real time. Without a legal framework for ownership rights and dispute resolution, institutional participation stays subdued even if the pilot proves the technology works.
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