LSEG digital money infrastructure could be the catalyst tokenised deposits need to take off
- Future of Finance
- Jan 18
- 4 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has built an infrastructure with Canton Network called DisH to put commercial bank money on-chain
The DiSH infrastructure, unlike the tokenised deposit platforms developed by banks, is an open network not a closed universe
DisH aims to facilitate settlement of traditional financial market transactions as well as digital asset transactions on blockchains
On 15 January 2026 the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) announced it had launched a new commercial bank money settlement service.
The Digital Settlement House (or DiSH) is an open-access platform which enables users to record ownership of commercial bank deposits on a DiSH blockchain ledger and then tokenise them on the Canton network.
This allows the tokenised money to be transferred to any other token wallet on the Canton network instantly – indeed, atomically - 24/7. Users can settle cross-currency transactions on a payment-versus-payment (PvP) basis and asset purchases and sales on a delivery-versus-payment (DvP) basis.
Why would LSEG invest in a digital settlement service of this kind? There is nothing unusual, of course, about an exchange providing a settlement service in the securities markets; many exchanges do.
In this case, however, LSEG is also placing a bet on the future. It is a traditional infrastructure provider threatened by mass adoption of digital assets (albeit at present a distant threat) that is looking to develop capabilities that enable it to remain relevant during any transition that happens.
LSEG’s Digital Market Infrastructure (DMI), launched in September 2025, has a similar character. It provides an interoperability platform between tokenised assets and traditional assets. Similarly, DiSH aims not only to put commercial bank money on-chain to settle transactions in digital assets but to speed up commercial bank money settlement in traditional markets such as foreign exchange (FX) and repo.
For tokenised deposits, DiSH might be the catalyst that enables the market to finlay take off. Unlike the tokenised money issued by banks (JPM Coin, issued by J.P. Morgan is the best known) DiSH plus Canton is an open network, not a universe closed to non-clients of a bank. To put it another way, tokenised deposits have so far failed to take off because the infrastructure that supports them is not interoperable between banks.
Stablecoins, by contrast have grown rapidly, especially in the last two years as their regulatory status became clearer, precisely because they are interoperable not only between the major blockchains but between blockchains and traditional finance. According to DeFiLlama, Stablecoin supply grew from US$5.3 billion in January 2020 to US$307.5 billion exactly six years later. That is a compound annual growth rate of 96.8 per cent.
According to Visa - which adjusts the blockchain-derived data to exclude trading and lending transactions, as opposed to payments - Stablecoin transaction volume for the ten most popular Stablecoins on 14 blockchains has risen from US$565.08 billion in 2020 to US$11.09 trillion in 2025. That is a compound annual growth rate of 64.2 per cent. The (adjusted) number of transactions has increased in the same period by a compound annual rate of 74 per cent, from 78.4 million to 2.2 billion.
DiSH could unleash even faster growth in tokenised deposits if it operates as intended. After all, the value of bank deposits dwarfs the value of Stablecoins, which also suffer from the risks of being issued by third parties and dependent on holdings of short- and long-term securities as well as deposits, sometimes with a low level of transparency into the underlying assets.
DiSH, by contrast, makes bank deposits available to settle transactions by linking blockchains to the traditional banking infrastructure. Users can tokenise deposits in any currency at any bank that they use, provided the bank satisfies the criteria for admission to the DiSH network. They can then use the tokenised deposit to pay anyone anywhere instantly. The service is available around the clock too, and not during bank opening hours only.
DiSH provides settlement in commercial bank money only. It cannot deliver settlement in central bank money. But it does use bank deposits to make payments, just as the traditional banking industry does, and does not disturb the legal standing or insured status of the deposits. It also – presumably – achieves settlement in the same way as traditional payments, by the banks of the payer and receiver updating their records.
Nor does it require traditional banks to invest large sums in interfacing with DiSH. They retain control of which depositors can use the service. They even stand to benefit from faster settlement, if it enables them to reduce the cost of the large cash, credit, capital and collateral buffers they hold, especially across borders, to secure settlement of payments and securities transactions.
“LSEG DiSH expands the tokenised cash and cash like solutions available to the market, and for the first time, offers a real cash solution tokenised on the blockchain utilising cash in multiple currencies held at commercial banks,” says Daniel Maguire, Group Head, LSEG Markets and CEO, LCH Group. “This innovative service will enable users to reduce settlement risk, and integrate existing cash, securities and digital assets across new and existing market infrastructure. We look forward to developing this service in partnership with the market.”
The launch followed a successful Proof of Concept (PoC) with Digital Asset and a consortium of leading financial institutions, completing transactions in multiple currencies and asset classes on the Digital Asset-created Canton Network.
Maybe this is how a “common digital platform” or “single programmable platform” comes about in practice. Existing infrastructures invest in experiments in blockchain-based settlement networks, tokenisation platforms and digital asset custody services, and invest further in the ones that work. Over time, these initiatives will make existing buy- and sell-side firms indifferent as to whether the asset they are buying or selling or trading is digital or traditional.
This process is often labelled interoperability, as it is here, but it may run deeper than that. Richard Crook, CEO of Deus X Pay, has long forecast convergence of the traditional and the digital on a single operating model. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again,” he is apt to say, quoting Orwell in Animal Farm. “But already it was impossible to say which was which.”