WGC proposes physically-backed common infrastructure to scale digital gold

The World Gold Council (WGC) has proposed an initiative to build a physically-backed shared infrastructure to advance the growth of digital gold.

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

While digital gold products exist, they operate across fragmented infrastructure with inconsistent custody standards, redemption terms and governance frameworks, WGC Chief Strategy Officer Terry Heymann told PTI.

"The idea behind this initiative is to provide a shared infrastructure which could help gold to play a greater role in the digital economy. This will be backed by physical gold this will be accredited, inspected regularly, with processes in place to make sure that gold has been responsibly sourced and is accounted for," Heymann said.

 

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

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

According to the WGC white paper, the investor behaviour is shifting toward digital access.

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

Recent ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) inflows and the growth of tokenised gold signal rising 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 constrain fungibility, fragment liquidity, and limit gold's broader financial utility and without common infrastructure, digital gold risks remain a collection of isolated products rather than a unified asset ecosystem.

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