World Gold Council unveils plan to standardize tokenized gold infrastructure

The World Gold Council has proposed plans to develop a platform that will change how the metal operates in digital financial systems.

Summary

• World Gold Council has proposed a “Gold as a Service” platform aimed at standardizing and scaling tokenized gold products across digital financial systems.
• The model seeks to link physical gold custody with digital issuance frameworks while streamlining processes such as compliance, reconciliation, and redemption.

In a white paper released on March 18, the World Gold Council outlined plans for a proposed “Gold as a Service” platform that would “support the issuance and operation of scalable, interoperable digital gold products.”

The platform would link the physical custody of gold with digital systems used to issue and manage tokenized gold products. It would standardize essential market processes such as custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance, and redemption to “reduce operational complexity, improve access, and enable greater consistency across digital gold products,” the World Gold Council said.

Among some of the key features, the new service would include standardizing tokenized gold issuance and management, improving digital gold’s fungibility, embedding audits and assurance, enabling interoperability with existing financial rails, and improving liquidity in lending and borrowing markets.

According to CEO David Tait, gold must evolve to maintain its role in the global financial system.

“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,” he added.

It must be noted that similar products already exist, such as Tether Gold or Pax Gold, which have built their own custody, compliance, and redemption frameworks. However, the Council’s position in the space could offer its platform an edge among institutional participants.

World Gold Council’s push for digital gold

As previously reported by crypto.news, in September last year, Tait said the group was working on a framework that would allow participants to “pass gold digitally around the gold ecosystem, as collateral, for the first time.”

He said gold is often seen as a static unyielding asset, and by digitalizing it, the metal could be used for margins and collateral, generating profit for investors through a structure referred to as “pooled gold interest” or PGI.

A pilot for the initiative was planned for the first quarter of 2026.