The Global Financial Markets Association, with Arktouros and Ashurst as technical advisors, has published a report on how emerging forms of digital money are being used in capital markets and what must change for broader adoption. The report, The Role of Digital Money in Capital Markets, focuses on securities settlement, repurchase agreements and securities finance, and derivatives margining, and sets out recommendations for regulators, policymakers and industry participants to enable safe, scalable implementation. GFMA identifies tokenized deposits and deposit tokens as the near-term instrument of choice, citing programmability, atomic settlement and continuous availability as upgrades for intrabank funds settlement, while noting that wider interbank use depends on new infrastructure, legal frameworks and industry governance standards. Wholesale central bank digital currencies are presented as the lowest-risk settlement asset, but with uncertain availability timelines, prompting interim private-sector interbank settlement networks based on tokenized deposits and deposit tokens. Stablecoins are described as offering smart-contract functionality and access to permissionless networks, with market participants focusing on cross-border payments and exploring intrabank use cases across settlement, repo, securities lending and margin, but facing legal and regulatory uncertainty, particularly around capital treatment and cross-border recognition.
Global Financial Markets Association 2026-04-13
Global Financial Markets Association publishes report positioning tokenized deposits as the near-term digital money for capital markets and urging regulatory clarity
The Global Financial Markets Association, with Arktouros and Ashurst as technical advisors, has published a report on emerging digital money in capital markets, focusing on securities settlement, repos, securities finance and derivatives margining, and giving recommendations for regulators, policymakers and industry to enable safe, scalable implementation. It identifies tokenized deposits and deposit tokens as the preferred near-term instrument for intrabank settlement, envisages wholesale CBDCs as the lowest-risk settlement asset but with uncertain timelines, and notes that stablecoin use in settlement, repo, securities lending and margin is constrained by legal and regulatory uncertainty, including capital treatment and cross-border recognition.