Policy Resource

GFMA Publishes Report on the Role of Digital Money In Capital Markets

GFMA with Arktouros and Ashurst as technical advisors, have published a report titled The Role of Digital Money in Capital Markets, a new report examining how emerging forms of digital money—including tokenized deposits, deposit tokens, wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs), and stablecoins—are being deployed across key areas of capital markets activity. Focusing on securities settlement, repurchase agreements (repo) and securities finance as well as derivatives margining, the report highlights both the rapid progress underway and the critical regulatory, infrastructure, and governance barriers holding back broader adoption. It sets out clear recommendations and calls to action for regulators, policymakers, and industry participants to enable safe, scalable implementation.

Members of the three trade associations that comprise the GFMA are responsible for, and facilitate, the vast majority of global capital markets activity and the money movements that fuel them. This report reflects the practical experience of institutions at the forefront of building and deploying digital money solutions. Digital money is delivering meaningful improvements to capital markets and the promise of more as securities and real-world assets are increasingly tokenized. The 24/7 movement of funds with programmatic and atomic settlement against tokenized assets and automatization of complex transaction mechanics will enable new client services, mitigate risks, and lower costs for all market participants.

At the same time, there are hurdles that require the attention of policymakers, regulators, and the industry. These include providing additional legal and regulatory clarity for tokenized commercial bank money and stablecoins; building infrastructure to unlock efficiencies for all forms of digital money; and setting industry governance standards to enable the use of new rails.

 

Key Findings

Tokenized deposits are the near-term instrument of choice. Tokenized deposits and deposit tokens benefit from the long history of commercial bank money as a settlement asset and inherit its legal and economic features. Programmability, atomic settlement, and continuous availability offer meaningful near-term upgrades for intrabank funds settlement. The path to broader interbank use requires new public and private sector infrastructure, legal frameworks, and industry governance standards.

wCBDCs offer the lowest-risk settlement asset—but timelines remain uncertain. Wholesale CBDCs provide the lowest-risk asset for settlement along with programmability, atomic settlement, and extended operating hours. While institutions see significant promise in central bank wCBDC initiatives, availability timelines remain unclear. In the interim, private sector services are being built to provide interbank settlement using tokenized deposits and deposit tokens, creating networks that mirror the two-tier money system and can reach the market more quickly.

Stablecoins bring unique capabilities, but face regulatory hurdles to institutional adoption. Stablecoins are native to permissionless networks and offer smart-contract functionality and access to an open developer ecosystem. Capital market participants are currently focusing on cross-border payment use cases, while also investing in near-term services using stablecoins for intrabank securities settlement, repo, securities lending, and margin. Legal and regulatory uncertainties—most pressingly around capital treatment and cross-border recognition—remain significant hurdles to institutional, at-scale adoption.

As tokenized securities and real-world assets become more prevalent on blockchains, demand for digital money that can settle those assets will grow in parallel. Current capital market use cases reflect a balance: the likely primacy of tokenized deposits in the near-term, alongside the potential for stablecoins to play an important role if key challenges are addressed.

 

– 13 April 2026 –

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