WGC proposes shared infrastructure to fix fragmented digital gold market

The World Gold Council has proposed a 'Gold as a Service' model to standardise digital gold and address trust and interoperability gaps

The World Gold Council (WGC) on Thursday outlined plans to develop a shared infrastructure and a common backend system for digital gold as it seeks to address key issues across the sector, including fragmentation, inconsistent standards, and limited scalability.

 

The proposal, detailed in a joint paper with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), introduces a model termed ‘Gold as a Service’, which is supposed to be a backend framework designed to connect physical gold custody with digital issuance and product management.

 

Unlike a consumer-facing product, the model is intended to serve issuers by offering standardised processes for custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance, and redemption. The aim is to reduce operational complexity and enable digital gold products to function more like a unified asset class.

   

The WGC said the infrastructure is designed to “simplify the creation, issuance and ongoing management of digital gold products, reducing operational complexity.”

A market that hasn’t scaled

Despite the growth of digital investment options, such as ETFs and tokenised gold, the broader market remains fragmented. Different products operate on varying custody models, legal structures, and redemption terms, making them difficult to compare or integrate.

 

As a result, digital gold lacks fungibility, meaning one product is not necessarily equivalent to another. This has constrained liquidity and weakened investor confidence, particularly in a market where trust in underlying assets is critical.

 

Launching such products also remains complex and expensive, often requiring coordination across multiple service providers, including vaults, insurers, compliance firms, and technology platforms.

The proposed fix

WGC’s model seeks to address these structural gaps by introducing a shared infrastructure layer that standardises core processes while allowing issuers to retain control over product design and distribution.

 

At its core, the system links three elements: the physical storage and movement of gold, the digital issuance of products, and a connecting layer that ensures both remain synchronised.

 

By aligning these functions, the council expects digital gold to become more interoperable across platforms and more easily integrated into financial systems.

 

“Financial services are undergoing a rapid and pervasive digital transformation and gold must also evolve to maintain its role in the global financial system,” WGC chief executive officer David Tait said in a statement.

 

He added that shared infrastructure could help gold become “more accessible, more easily traded and fully integrated into modern financial systems”.

Why now

The proposal comes amid rising demand for digital access to gold, particularly among younger investors. Gold ETFs saw strong inflows in 2025, while tokenised gold and digital gold accounts have gained traction as alternative formats.

 

However, adoption remains limited relative to the size of the overall gold market, largely due to structural inefficiencies rather than a lack of demand.

 

Matthias Tauber, managing director and senior partner at BCG, said the focus is now shifting from whether gold will go digital at all to how it integrates with modern systems. “The question is no longer whether gold will be digital, it’s how it can participate in modern financial systems without compromising physical integrity,” he said.

Early-stage, industry-dependent

The WGC has positioned itself as a neutral convener for the initiative and has called on market participants, including financial institutions, technology providers, and regulators, to contribute to the development of the infrastructure.

 

However, the proposal remains at a conceptual stage, with no timeline or implementation roadmap outlined. Instead, its success depends on industry-wide adoption and the ability to align standards across jurisdictions, as well as long-standing challenges in the evolution of digital gold. If implemented, the model could allow digital gold to move beyond its current role as a passive store of value and become a more functional financial asset.