The World Gold Council (WGC) announced a pioneering initiative to build new market infrastructure designed to unlock the next era of digital gold’s development.  Thailand is well positioned to adopt this given its highly active gold market and advance digital infrastructure.

WGC has co-authored a White paper titled Digital Gold: The Case for a Shared Infrastructure with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) which explores “Gold as a Service” – a new platform to support the issuance and operation of scalable, interoperable digital gold products.

Gold as a Service would act as an open platform, connecting the physical custody of gold with the digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products. By standardising essential market processes such as custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption, the model aims to reduce operational complexity, improve access and enable greater consistency across digital gold products.  The platform could, in time, transform Thailand from a largely physical gold trading market into a digital bullion hub, improving currency stability and enhancing transparency while supporting Thailand’s evolving regulatory oversight of gold trading. It could also expand retail investment opportunities.

Addressing the Structural Barriers to Digital Gold

The White paper acknowledges that gold has already undergone meaningful digitalisation, with trading, clearing and recordkeeping now largely electronic and a growing range of digital gold products such as tokens, now available. Yet despite these innovations, digital gold remains limited in scale largely due to structural constraints. Launching and operating digital gold products remains complex, with limited standardisation and reduced fungibility restricting its ability to integrate with modern financial systems.

Gold as a Service is proposed as a response to these challenges. Recognising the physical nature of gold, it is designed to modernise how gold integrates with an increasingly digital financial ecosystem, while preserving the asset’s foundational attributes that have underpinned its role and relevance for millennia.

 Key Features of the Platform Would Include:

• Seamless Product Issuance and Management: Standardised infrastructure and operating models would simplify the creation, issuance and ongoing management of digital gold products, reducing operational complexity.
• Ease of Trade: By standardising processes, Gold as a Service aims to increase digital gold’s fungibility, allowing it to function as a single asset with consistent value and legal rights across the ecosystem.
• Embedded Trust and Assurance: Continuous reconciliation, audit and assurance would be built into shared infrastructure, strengthening confidence in digital gold by supporting consistent proof of physical backing and clearly defined ownership and redemption frameworks.
• Interoperability by Design: Shared infrastructure would enable digital gold products to integrate more easily with existing financial market infrastructure and emerging digital rails, improving mobility across platforms, venues and use cases.
• Broader Utility: As fungibility and liquidity improve, digital gold could extend beyond its traditional role as a diversifier and store of value. Gold can become deployable capital, enabling new use cases like pledging gold as collateral for borrowing.

David Tait, Chief Executive Officer, World Gold Council commented:

“Financial services are undergoing a rapid and pervasive digital transformation and gold must also evolve to maintain its role in the global financial system. Gold as a Service is the latest step in the World Gold Council’s digital gold innovation programme, designed to strengthen trust, transparency and market efficiency. Shared infrastructure can help gold become more accessible, more easily traded and fully integrated into modern financial systems — ensuring it remains as relevant tomorrow as it has been for millennia.”

Matthias Tauber, Managing Director and Senior Partner, BCG added:

“The question is no longer whether gold will be digital, it’s how it can participate in modern financial systems without compromising physical integrity. Together with the World Gold Council, we explored what it takes to build trusted rails for digital gold, at market scale.”

 The World Gold Council is calling for innovators and market participants from inside and outside the gold industry to convene, challenge and contribute to the development of this shared infrastructure that the WGC will build.