Doha Bank has completed a $150 million digital bond that settled instantly on Euroclear’s distributed ledger infrastructure, underscoring how regulated DLT systems, not public blockchains, are becoming the preferred rails for tokenized institutional debt.
The Qatari lender listed its digital native notes on the London Stock Exchange’s International Securities Market, achieving same-day settlement through Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure, a licensed DLT platform operated by a central securities depository.
Standard Chartered acted as the sole global coordinator and sole arranger of the deal, leading the structuring, execution and distribution of Doha Bank’s $150 million digital bond.
A growing number of banks and regulators in the Middle East and Asia are adopting permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms for digital bond issuance to ensure regulatory control. Meanwhile, selective use cases, such as DBS tokenized structured notes on Ethereum, show that public blockchains are also being deployed where investor access, programmability and market design make openness viable.
“Doha Bank’s first digital bond issuance underscores the real, tangible efficiencies that cutting-edge digital infrastructure is bringing to capital markets, and the growing appetite among our clients for this next-generation capability and execution,” Salman Ansari, the bank’s global head of capital markets, said in a statement.
Designed for regulated markets
Unlike public blockchains, which are open networks, Euroclear’s DLT is designed for regulated capital markets and offers controlled access, legal finality and integration with existing settlement and custody systems.
That structure allows issuers to capture the efficiency gains of tokenization, such as T+0 settlement and automated record-keeping, while remaining compatible with international market standards and the requirements of institutional investors.
“This transaction demonstrates that same-day execution and settlement can be achieved through a neutral and regulated DLT infrastructure that aligns with established market standards, reducing friction and time while maintaining the level of security expected by issuers and investors,” said Sebastien Danloy, Chief Commercial Officer at Euroclear.
The transaction is part of a broader regional push to modernize capital markets infrastructure rather than create parallel crypto-native systems.
Orion, developed by HSBC, has been used for sovereign and corporate digital bonds in Hong Kong, mainland China and the Middle East, and is designed to integrate directly with existing post-trade infrastructure such as Euroclear, Clearstream and the Hong Kong Central Monetary Markets Unit.
That interoperability allows issuers to achieve faster settlement and on-chain recordkeeping while keeping custody, pricing, and investor access anchored in familiar market structures.
Onyx, now branded JPMorgan’s Kinexys, serves a similar function for bank-issued debt and commercial paper, enabling end-to-end issuance and near-instant settlement using tokenized cash.
Standard Chartered said the deal reflected growing customer demand for digital broadcasts.
Taken together, the deal adds to a growing body of digital bond issuance in the Middle East and Asia, where banks and regulators are steadily moving tokenization from pilot projects to real markets by building DLT into existing capital markets infrastructure rather than reinventing it.
