World Gold Council's 'Gold as a Service' platform to improve access to digital gold: Report

New Delhi, March 23 (IANS) The World Gold Council’s 'Gold as a Service' platform announced on Monday to create a new market infrastructure to link physical custody of yellow metal with digital systems will improve access to digital gold products.

The report from Boston Consulting Group India said Gold as a Service would act as an open platform, connecting the physical custody of gold with the "digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products."

By standardising custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption, the new model aims to reduce operational complexity, improve access and enable greater consistency across digital gold products, the report said.

The report described “Gold as a Service” as a platform to support the issuance and operation of scalable, interoperable digital gold products.

“God is deeply woven into India’s cultural and financial fabric, with households holding over 25,000 tons. ‘Gold as a Service’ presents a transformative opportunity to modernise and digitize access for millions of Indian investors," said Abhishek Bhatia, Managing Director and Partner, BCG

Bhatia said the shared infrastructure will enable seamless digital gold products' access across India’s fintech ecosystem and UPI-driven payments landscape.

"By fostering trust and interoperability, it empowers innovators, from neobanks to jewellery retailers, to scale gold-backed savings, remittances, and micro-investments, making it easier for millions to save and invest in gold digitally," he said.

The World Gold Council noted that gold has already undergone meaningful digitalisation, with trading, clearing and recordkeeping now largely electronic and a growing range of digital gold products such as tokens, now available.

Despite these innovations, digital gold, however, remains limited in scale largely due to structural constraints due to limited standardisation and reduced fungibility.

Gold as a Service is proposed to solve these challenges and modernise how gold integrates with an increasingly digital financial ecosystem, the report noted.

—IANS

aar/pk