The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on September 10, 2026, issued the FAQs on Demat 2.0: Pilot for Tokenised Corporate Bonds.
The following has been stated:
• SEBI’s Demat 2.0 pilot explores the issuance, holding, trading and settlement of corporate bonds in tokenised form using private, permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). The tokenised bond remains the same security under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956, with the same ISIN, rights, obligations, rating, coupon and maturity; only the technology for recording ownership and settlement changes.
• Investors can use their existing demat accounts and KYC, with Demat 2.0 functioning as an extension of the existing account, while CBDC (e₹) is used for the funds leg to enable atomic Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP). Existing EBP, RFQ and OTC platforms will continue to support issuance and trading, and the depository remains the authoritative record keeper.
• The pilot is proposed in three stages, beginning with institutional issuance, followed by secondary-market trading and retail participation, and potentially extending the infrastructure to other regulated entities and instruments.
