What are India’s plans for launching its first tokenised corporate bond issue through state owned power financier REC in September 2026, including the issue’s size, purpose, regulatory collaboration, CBDC based purchase process, limited pilot investor access, required wholesale d

India plans a tightly controlled September 2026 pilot in which state-owned power financier REC will issue the country’s first tokenised corporate bonds, testing blockchain-based securities and settlement rather than opening a full retail market. The reported issue size is below ₹500 crore. 13

How the pilot is expected to work

• Purpose: Test whether tokenisation can make corporate-bond transactions near-instant, while improving operational efficiency and supporting future programmable bond servicing. 17

• Regulatory structure: The Securities and Exchange Board of India is pursuing the pilot with the Reserve Bank of India, linking tokenised securities with the RBI’s wholesale central-bank digital currency (w-CBDC) settlement infrastructure. 27

• Investor access and payment: Participation will initially be restricted to a selected group of pilot investors. They would buy the REC bonds using w-CBDC, rather than conventional payment rails. 7

• Two required wallets: Pilot participants are expected to need:

  • a wholesale-CBDC wallet to hold and transfer the digital rupee used for payment; and
  • a DEMAT 2.0 securities wallet to hold and track the tokenised bond position on the distributed ledger.
    Evidence supplied here is limited on the detailed technical design of these wallets, but the reported pilot structure is consistent with a delivery-versus-payment model. 7

• Ledger and settlement: Ownership and transaction records would be maintained on a distributed ledger, enabling the intended near-instant exchange of tokenised bonds for w-CBDC instead of the longer settlement processes common in conventional markets. 17

Market restrictions and next step

• The initial REC tokens are expected to have a three-month lock-in, so investors would not be able to trade them immediately. 6

• They would be kept off the conventional electronic book platform during the pilot. A secondary-market facility is planned for development by exchanges by December 2026, subject to the pilot’s progress and regulatory implementation. 6

Why it matters

• This is a proof-of-concept for bringing India’s much larger corporate-bond market onto regulated blockchain rails, not a general launch of crypto-like securities trading. 27

• If executed as reported, India would join jurisdictions such as European markets and Hong Kong that have already tested or established blockchain-based bond issuance and settlement. Its distinctive feature is the proposed integration of tokenised securities with an RBI wholesale CBDC, potentially testing atomic, regulated delivery-versus-payment at market scale. 17

• Important caveat: the September timing, exact structure, investor list, and secondary-market rollout are reported plans based on sources with direct knowledge, rather than a completed REC issuance or a full public operational rulebook. 1