Global market infrastructure provider Deutsche Borse Group, Swiss state-owned telecoms and ICT firm Swisscom, and Swiss and Singapore-based fintech company Sygnum have entered into a strategic partnership to build out a compliant financial market infrastructure for digital assets. The development was announced in a joint press release published on March 11.
The new initiative will reportedly focus on creating a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based ecosystem to support the nascent tokenized economy, which, the partners contend, “has the potential to reshape global financial markets.”
The forthcoming ecosystem will reportedly span compliant digital asset issuance and custody solutions, as well as providing market participants with access to liquidity and banking services.
According to the press release, Sygnum has obtained a Swiss banking and securities dealer license from Swiss regulator FINMA, and can thus provide “comprehensive banking services such as custody, deposits, credit & lending, capital issuance via tokenization, brokerage and asset management” for the initiative.
Swisscom will provide the project with the scalable DLT infrastructure it has developed, which reportedly meets the security requirements of financial services institutions.
The new partnership also reportedly entails Deutsche Borse becoming a shareholder of Custodigit AG — a company that was jointly founded by Swisscom and Sygnum, which develops technical digital asset custodial solutions for regulated financial services institutions.
Moreover, Deutsche Borse and Sygnum will make investments in daura AG — a DLT platform that supports the issuance, transfer and registration of Swiss SME-shares, enabling non-listed companies to access the capital markets.
Deutsche Borse and Sygnum are further developing a conceptual framework for the creation of a compliant open listing and trading venue for digital assets in the Swiss market, which the partners deem to be an important element in developing a scalable digital assets ecosystem.
Subject to the merger control clearance, the three partners reportedly aim to roll out the first services of their digital asset ecosystem over the course of this year.
As reported, Deutsche Borse has this month completed a proof-of-concept for a legally binding repo transaction using DLT together with German financial services company Commerzbank. The exchange group is also reported to be making significant progress with its blockchain-powered securities lending platform, co-developed with Luxembourg-based blockchain liquidity management platform HQLAx.
In January, Swisscom announced its integrated, certified e-signature to legally authenticate blockchain-powered smart contracts, together with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.