India Settles Tokenised Bonds in CBDC
India's securities regulator SEBI launched its Demat 2.0 pilot — a tokenised layer on the country's existing electronic securities system — with coverage reporting over $100 million in tokenised bonds settled using the Reserve Bank's wholesale digital rupee, per The Block. Settlement is atomic: the bond token and the central-bank money move in the same instant. The pilot follows India's first tokenised corporate bond sale, bought by HDFC and ICICI, reported earlier this week.
Demat 2.0: the money moves the moment the bond does
Demat is India's system of electronic securities accounts — where the country's shares and bonds already live as database entries.
Demat 2.0 turns those entries into tokens.
The clever bit isn't the tokens. It's atomic settlement.
The bond and the cash swap in the same instant. The cash side is India's wholesale digital rupee — central-bank money for institutions.
Same-day cash for issuers instead of a two-day wait. No half-completed deals.
Last week South Korea published a plan to tokenise all its securities from 2027.
India skipped the announcement and ran the pilot.
The efficiency is real. So is the design: every bond now settles in money the state issues and tracks.