French bank Société Générale is launching stock tokens based on the Tezos blockchain to integrate with banking systems and interact with institutional clients.
Société Générale will present its own tokenized shares with the participation of Forge subsidiary. The launch of stock tokens will expand the list of services provided to institutional investors. This step could bring the bank closer to the cryptocurrency market by 2022.
The investment giant called it a new experiment in line with cutting-edge market trends. The bank has concluded that such complex financial instruments using an open blockchain can operate in compliance with the necessary regulations, as well as legal and technical requirements.
The bank has been conducting research in the field of blockchain and cryptocurrencies for more than three years. In 2019, the financial giant issued bonds worth 100 million euros in the form of stock tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, Société Générale and Forge issued EUR 40 million tokenized bonds in May 2020 and used them to conduct research on the digital currency of the Bank of France. According to media reports, Société Générale, along with other major financial institutions, was recently selected by the European Investment Bank to study the potential of blockchain to use it to sell bonds.
Société Générale is one of many banks experimenting with financial technology and blockchain. Earlier, the commercial bank Bank of China also issued bonds on the blockchain in the amount of $ 2.8 billion, and Bank Santander presented tokenized bonds for $ 20 million on the Ethereum blockchain. This made it possible to carry out operations with them faster and more efficiently than traditional methods.
