Thailand Studies Blockchain Use Cases for Bond Token

A bond market self-regulatory organization in Thailand is planning to utilize blockchain technology in order to speed up corporate bond settlement throughout the country as soon as next month, Bangkok Post reported.

The Thailand Bond Market Association (TBMA) says that the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission has already agreed to the system “in principle,” it added.

Chaitat Prachuabdee, executive vice-president of TBMA, said the new system will cut the existing operational process to 1-3 days from 7-10 days, with greater convenience and access to bond information.

The development should go through three phases, with the first one starting next month. According to the report, it will include creating a bond registrar service platform, to be used for bond trading and information, the president of the TBMA, Tada Phutthitada, said. Services will include a bond settlement information system, a bond subscription system and a verification system for bond transactions.

The second phase of the development the platform will add in new features to enable bond deposits, which is estimated to take nine months for completion. Eventually, a bond coin is to be developed on top of the blockchain platform in the next 12 months to tokenize assets so that they can get cleared and settled, as part of the third phase of development.

Meanwhile, the leading Swiss stock exchange, SIX, has also announced plans for a “new market infrastructure” which is essentially a cryptocurrency exchange under the same regulations and level of oversight as SIX itself.