Blockchain-Powered Bond Settlement Is Coming to India. Here Is What SEBI Is Planning
India’s securities regulator has made its most significant move yet toward putting bonds on a blockchain. The Securities and Exchange Board of India announced plans to pilot tokenised corporate bonds using digital ledger technology, with a rollout expected within six to nine months.
The announcement was made by SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey at the Care Edge Debt Market Summit in Mumbai and came alongside a second initiative, a comprehensive overhaul of disclosure requirements for listed debt securities.
What Tokenisation Solves
India’s corporate bond market has long struggled with structural inefficiencies. Settlement takes time, transaction costs are high and traceability is poor compared to equity markets. Tokenisation addresses these problems directly.
Instead of bonds settling through layers of intermediaries over multiple days tokenised bonds can settle nearly instantaneously. SEBI is betting on this to solve chronic problems including limited liquidity, high transaction costs, poor traceability and manual servicing processes.
India’s corporate bond market currently sits at approximately $0.56 trillion, representing roughly 15% of the country’s GDP. Despite its size, the market has consistently lagged behind equities in terms of accessibility and efficiency.
Chairman Pandey acknowledged the scale of the challenge. He emphasised the need for a cautious approach, citing existing technological and operational risks that come with integrating distributed ledger technology into a market of this size.
Disclosure Rules Get an Overhaul
The second part of SEBI’s announcement is equally significant for bond market participants. SEBI wants to align bond disclosure requirements with the standards set under its Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements regulations, the same framework that governs equity issuers. Companies issuing bonds would need to share roughly the same level of information as those issuing stock. That means more frequent reporting, more granular financial data and more standardised communication with the market.
SEBI is also exploring the creation of a regulatory category for debt brokers and is working on a market-making framework in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of India and the finance ministry.
Building on a Policy Recommendation
The pilot does not come out of nowhere. A December 2025 report from NITI Aayog recommended that regulators consider piloting tokenised bonds as a way to foster innovation in India’s financial infrastructure. SEBI’s announcement effectively puts that recommendation into action.
For India’s crypto and blockchain sector, the development signals a meaningful shift in how regulators view distributed ledger technology, less as a risk to be managed and more as infrastructure worth building on.
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