London Stock Exchange announced on Tuesday that it plans to launch UK tokenised equity structures and has formed a partnership with Payward, a financial infrastructure platform, to explore the next stage of tokenised public equity markets.
The exchange is said to be assessing a UK tokenised equity structure intended to widen access to capital markets while preserving existing shareholder rights, protections and governance standards. The effort will examine how LSEG’s Digital Securities Depository could support settlement and asset servicing, pending regulatory approval.
The initiative sits alongside other LSEG efforts to modernise market infrastructure, including LSE 24, its recently announced 24-hour trading venue, along with the Digital Securities Depository and Digital Settlement House.
The partnership with Payward will look at how digital-native access, wallet-based interaction and partner infrastructure could link with LSEG’s regulated market ecosystem, aiming to connect tokenised and traditional infrastructure while meeting obligations such as anti-money laundering and operational resilience requirements.
Separately, subject to regulatory approval, London Stock Exchange intends to list xStocks and begin trading them on LSE 24 in 2027. xStocks are tokenised representations of publicly traded shares, backed 1:1 by the underlying security.
Julia Hoggett, CEO of LSE plc and Head of Digital and Securities Markets at LSEG, said tokenisation has the potential to change how investors access markets and how issuers use them, but must develop in a way that preserves trust in regulated markets.
Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward, said the partnership represents a step toward connecting new forms of market access with established infrastructure, describing it as turning a broader vision for blockchain-based securities into practical market infrastructure.
