Headline: DBS to offer tokenized, physically backed gold to retail investors in H2 2026
Singapore’s largest lender, DBS, will roll out tokenized gold backed by physical bullion to retail customers in the second half of 2026, marking a major step in its expanding tokenization playbook.
Called DBS Physical Gold Tokens and slated to be offered via the bank’s digibank platform, each token will represent 1 gram of actual gold held in a dedicated DBS vault in Singapore. DBS says it will handle issuance, distribution, management and custody on its own infrastructure, preserving physical backing and on‑chain ownership. The bank is also evaluating a future listing on its DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx), which today serves accredited and institutional investors.
The move follows growing client demand: DBS reports that physical gold allocations in its wealth portfolios have more than doubled over the past three years. For many retail investors, direct ownership of physical bullion has been harder to access than gold funds. “While our retail investors have been able to buy gold funds, access to physical gold has been largely available to only institutional and accredited investors,” said James Tan, head of investment products and advisory at DBS. “DBS has offered physical gold investments to wealth clients since 2013, and we are now leveraging tokenisation to broaden access, enabling more retail customers to invest in gold in a safe and meaningful way.”
DBS’s gold launch builds on a string of blockchain-based initiatives. In 2025 the bank tokenized structured notes on Ethereum and later partnered with Franklin Templeton and Ripple to bring tokenized money market fund products and stablecoin services to accredited and institutional investors via DDEx. That effort included the listing of Franklin Templeton’s sgBENJI token (units of a tokenized U.S. dollar money market fund) alongside Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, and plans to allow tokenized fund units to be used as collateral in financing arrangements such as repo and lending, with DBS acting as custodian.
With the H2 2026 rollout, DBS aims to put a traditionally institutional asset onto a retail-accessible platform via tokenization — a continuation of the wider trend of big banks bringing physically backed, regulated token products to mainstream investors.
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