World Gold Council launches shared digital gold platform

The World Gold Council has launched an initiative to build shared infrastructure for digital gold, developed with Boston Consulting Group.

The proposal centres on a model called Gold as a Service, which would provide a common infrastructure for issuing and operating gold-backed digital products. The platform is intended to link physical gold custody with the digital systems used to create, manage and redeem those products.

Digital gold has grown through electronic trading, clearing and recordkeeping, alongside a rising market for tokenised and other gold-backed instruments. But the market remains fragmented. Issuers often have to arrange custody, compliance, reconciliation and redemption separately, adding cost and complexity.

That fragmentation has also limited fungibility, making it harder for digital gold products to function as a single asset across platforms. In turn, this has constrained broader use in financial markets, where standardisation and clear legal treatment are often needed for collateral, settlement and integration with other systems.

Shared model

Under the proposed structure, common processes would be used for custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption. The aim is to make it easier for issuers and merchants to launch products without building each part of the operating framework from scratch.

The proposal also seeks to give digital gold more consistent treatment across venues and products. According to the white paper, standardised handling could allow digital gold to carry the same value, rights and operational processes across the ecosystem, supporting trading and transfer between participants.

Another element of the model is continuous alignment between physical gold holdings, digital balances and legal ownership records. This approach is intended to strengthen trust in digital products by embedding reconciliation, audit and assurance into the infrastructure rather than relying only on periodic checks.

Market hurdles

The plan reflects a broader effort to address a long-standing problem in tokenised real-world assets: digital wrappers can be issued quickly, but the underlying market structure often remains manual or fragmented. In gold, the challenge is more pronounced because the asset is physical, custody arrangements are critical, and redemption rights must be clearly defined.

These structural barriers have limited the scale of digital gold even as investor demand for digital assets and tokenised financial products has grown. The proposed infrastructure is intended to preserve gold's physical backing while allowing it to interact more easily with digital finance.

Interoperability is central to that case. The white paper says shared infrastructure could help digital gold products connect more easily with existing financial market systems as well as newer digital networks, making it simpler to move gold-backed assets across platforms and use cases.

That could expand the role of digital gold beyond simple exposure to the metal's price. If products become more fungible and liquid, gold-backed digital assets could potentially be pledged as collateral, used in credit arrangements or incorporated into programmable payment structures.

"Financial services are undergoing a rapid and pervasive digital transformation and gold must also evolve to maintain its role in the global financial system. Gold as a Service is the latest step in the World Gold Council's digital gold innovation programme, designed to strengthen trust, transparency and market efficiency. Shared infrastructure can help gold become more accessible, more easily traded and fully integrated into modern financial systems - ensuring it remains as relevant tomorrow as it has been for millennia," said David Tait, Chief Executive Officer of the World Gold Council.

Boston Consulting Group worked with the council on the white paper setting out the case for the model. Its contribution focused on the market structure needed to support trusted digital gold at scale, particularly where ownership, backing and transfer must remain tightly linked.

"The question is no longer whether gold will be digital, it's how it can participate in modern financial systems without compromising physical integrity. Together with the World Gold Council, we explored what it takes to build trusted rails for digital gold, at market scale," said Matthias Tauber, managing director and senior partner at BCG.

The initiative comes as financial institutions and market operators continue to test tokenisation in areas including bonds, funds, collateral and commodities. While some tokenised assets have gained traction, many projects still face the same questions over interoperability, settlement standards, custody and legal certainty that the gold market is now trying to address through a common framework.

For the World Gold Council, the project is an attempt to shape those standards rather than leave the market to develop through separate products with differing rules and structures. The proposal's central claim is that digital gold will struggle to achieve wider adoption unless market participants can rely on shared infrastructure that links physical inventory, digital issuance and ownership records consistently.