Money no longer takes days to move. It moves at digital speeds, often in milliseconds. Instant rails, crypto assets, and embedded finance have reshaped expectations across markets. Finance leaders no longer debate digitisation. They debate velocity, trust and control. The conversation has shifted from faster payments to programmable settlement.
Digital wallets already sit at the centre of consumer and enterprise flows. Juniper Research’s Digital Wallets Market: 2025–2030 report projects six billion digital wallet users globally by 2030. That scale turns wallets into an infrastructure base layer, enabling tokenised cash, commodities, and equities to move seamlessly across ecosystems. Payment tokenisation reflects a structural redesign of how value transfers across institutions, borders and asset classes.
Understanding payment tokenisation
Payment tokenisation replaces sensitive payment credentials or fiat value with a unique digital token that represents the underlying asset without exposing it. This shift directly addresses mounting cybersecurity and compliance pressures. Rising cyber threats, stricter PCI DSS obligations and growing privacy expectations demand stronger data controls.
At the same time, enterprises must seek faster settlement and improved capital efficiency.
Payment tokenisation in financial services delivers more than security. It enables:
- Instant internal transfers while fiat remains in regulated custody
- Reduces PCI DSS scope
- Simplifies data governance
- Enhances customer experience across unified commerce channels
- Transforms liquidity
Institutions can tokenise commodities, equities or receivables, making previously illiquid assets transferable and programmable. Banking, insurance, capital markets, manufacturing supply chains, and commodities trading all stand to benefit from this evolution.
In short, tokenisation transforming payments elevates them from a back-office function to a strategic value orchestration layer.
How does payment tokenisation works in financial services?
Payment tokenisation in financial services follows a structured lifecycle. The process blends custody, digital representation, and programmable execution. Payment tokenisation involves:[1]
- Custody anchor: Institutions secure fiat or assets in a regulated custody account to anchor value and compliance.
- Token generation: The institution generates a unique digital token that represents the exact on-chain value of the underlying asset.
- Secure Storage: Teams secure token metadata and ownership records while maintaining compatibility with existing payment systems.
- Transfer and automation: Organisations move tokens instantly across approved networks and use smart contracts to automate settlement.
- Settlement or redemption: Parties can exchange tokenised assets atomically or convert tokens back to fiat when necessary.
Despite clear advantages, organisations must address integration with legacy cores, format preservation within existing rails and institutional inertia that treats payments as operational rather than strategic infrastructure. Successfully managing these constraints determines whether payment tokenisation can scale enterprise-wide.
Financial institutions need orchestration rather than isolated pilots to operationalise payment tokenisation. Infosys BPM delivers integrated BPM solutions for financial services that align compliance, treasury, risk and technology teams. With domain expertise and digital transformation capabilities, Infosys BPM helps organisations embed tokenisation into workflows, modernise settlement models and operationalise payment tokenisation in financial services at scale.
Tokenisation transforming payments in 2026
Going into 2026, tokenisation transforming payments will not remain confined to fintech labs. It will reshape asset access, liquidity and revenue models across industries. Payment tokenisation will drive agility, automation, and revenue growth by:
Expanding access to commodities
Tokenised commodities will lower entry barriers and enhance transparency. Fractional ownership structures widen participation, while distributed ledgers provide real-time visibility into pricing and provenance. Institutions gain improved liquidity and simplified cross-border settlement, strengthening both market access and operational trust.
Accelerating equity market innovation
Equity markets will experience structural acceleration through tokenisation. Fractional shares broaden investor inclusion, and near-instant settlement reduces counterparty exposure. Issuers gain direct engagement with investors, while payment tokenisation in financial services supports seamless integration between trading, custody, and settlement layers.
Unlocking capital for emerging enterprises
Growth-stage companies often face liquidity constraints and limited global reach. Payment tokenisation enables fractional participation, cross-border capital flows and programmable collateral structures. Smart contracts can automate milestone-based disbursements, creating flexible financing frameworks that traditional models struggle to deliver.
Streamlining industrial value chains
Manufacturing and commodities ecosystems will adopt tokenised settlement to automate supplier payments, execute conditional trade finance and distribute royalties instantly. These capabilities improve treasury visibility and reduce reconciliation friction, reinforcing operational agility.
Execution discipline determines impact. For payment tokenisation in financial services to drive sustainable impact, organisations must:
- Identify high-value use cases aligned with liquidity or risk priorities.
- Assess integration and regulatory constraints early.
- Engage stakeholders across treasury, IT and compliance.
- Design trust into governance and cybersecurity controls.
- Choose appropriate token models based on asset type and jurisdiction.
- Deploy tokenisation at entry points to limit data exposure.
- Enable real-time routing and monitoring for operational resilience.
- Learn from ecosystem pioneers while tailoring architecture internally.
Enterprises that execute payment tokenisation strategically will be in a position to convert it into a durable competitive advantage.
Conclusion
While digital wallets laid the foundation, programmable value now defines the next frontier. Payment tokenisation in financial services reduces settlement friction, strengthens compliance posture and unlocks capital efficiency across asset classes.
As payment tokenisation continues to gain maturity in 2026, financial institutions will need to redesign their payment architecture, treasury strategy and revenue models. Competitive differentiation will hinge not on adoption alone, but on disciplined, enterprise-wide execution.
Frequently asked questions
Payment tokenisation replaces sensitive credentials or fiat value with unique digital tokens that represent underlying assets without exposing actual data. This reduces PCI DSS scope, simplifies data governance, and protects against cyber threats while enabling seamless transfers across payment systems.
The process involves custody anchoring (securing assets), token generation, secure metadata storage, instant token transfers via smart contracts, and atomic settlement or redemption back to fiat. This structure maintains compliance while enabling programmable, millisecond-speed value movement.
Tokenisation enables fractional commodity ownership, instant equity settlement with reduced counterparty risk, programmable financing for growth companies, and automated industrial supply chain payments. Financial institutions gain liquidity transformation, cross-border efficiency, and new revenue from embedded asset services.
Tokens limit data exposure during transfers, reducing breach impact and PCI compliance burden while regulated custody maintains financial controls. Smart contract automation enforces settlement conditions, eliminating manual reconciliation risks common in traditional flows.
Success requires identifying high-value use cases first, early regulatory assessment, cross-functional governance across treasury/IT/compliance, and integration with existing cores using entry-point tokenisation. Phased deployment with real-time monitoring builds operational resilience and stakeholder confidence.
Payment tokenisation replaces sensitive credentials or fiat value with unique digital tokens that represent underlying assets without exposing actual data. This reduces PCI DSS scope, simplifies data governance, and protects against cyber threats while enabling seamless transfers across payment systems.
The process involves custody anchoring (securing assets), token generation, secure metadata storage, instant token transfers via smart contracts, and atomic settlement or redemption back to fiat. This structure maintains compliance while enabling programmable, millisecond-speed value movement.
Tokenisation enables fractional commodity ownership, instant equity settlement with reduced counterparty risk, programmable financing for growth companies, and automated industrial supply chain payments. Financial institutions gain liquidity transformation, cross-border efficiency, and new revenue from embedded asset services.
Tokens limit data exposure during transfers, reducing breach impact and PCI compliance burden while regulated custody maintains financial controls. Smart contract automation enforces settlement conditions, eliminating manual reconciliation risks common in traditional flows.
Success requires identifying high-value use cases first, early regulatory assessment, cross-functional governance across treasury/IT/compliance, and integration with existing cores using entry-point tokenisation. Phased deployment with real-time monitoring builds operational resilience and stakeholder confidence.
