WGC proposes a physically supported common infrastructure to scale digital gold

The World Gold Council (WGC) has proposed an initiative to build a physically supported shared infrastructure to drive the development of digital gold.

The WGC has proposed through a white paper the concept of ‘Gold as a Service’, a platform owned and operated by the World Gold Council and designed as a shared infrastructure that any market participant can access to create digital gold products without the need to develop their own end-to-end systems.

While digital gold products exist, they operate in a fragmented infrastructure with inconsistent custody norms, redemption terms and governance frameworks, WGC Chief Strategy Officer Terry Heyman told PTI.

“The idea behind this initiative is to provide a shared infrastructure that can help gold play a greater role in the digital economy. This will be backed by physical gold, which will be recognized, regularly inspected, with processes to ensure that the gold is responsibly sourced and accounted for,” Heyman said.

Gold as a Service aims to strengthen trust, reduce complexity and enable digital gold to act as a coherent, interoperable asset class for the digital financial era, he noted.

Such infrastructure, he said, aims to change how gold participates in the financial system.

According to WGC’s white paper, investor behavior is changing towards digital access.

Retail investors increasingly use digital platforms and expect fractional ownership, seamless transfers and real-time settlement.

Recent ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) flows and the growth of tokenized gold signal growing demand for digital exposure, however, digital gold remains small relative to the broader market due to structural frictions that limit scale and integration.

These structural frictions limit the fungibility, fragment liquidity and broader financial utility of gold, and without a common infrastructure, digital gold risks remaining a collection of separate products rather than a unified asset ecosystem.

“So we are just getting started on that. Conversations around the evolving gold landscape and regulatory environment are ongoing. We are planning to take input from all stakeholders. This is a global initiative and we are engaging with government representatives, market participants and others to understand their concerns and expectations and meet the needs of stakeholders and consumers,” he added.