Crédit Agricole continues to make progress on tokenisation

Although Crédit Agricole is not the most vocal bank in Web3, it is nonetheless particularly active on the subject. A few months after announcing its launch, the bank's tokenisation platform, "So|Bond", is being rolled out.

The "green" bank is working with several partners such as FeverToken, whose speciality is designing and securing smart contracts, and Casper Association, which is an expert in blockchain modelling of financial products 💸.

The aim of the So|Bond platform, which is being piloted by CACIB, Crédit Agricole's corporate and investment bank, is to enable customers to tokenise assets on the blockchain.

"Blockchain technology makes it possible to modernise and digitise the banking and financial sectors thanks to a decentralised and efficient infrastructure," Crédit Agricole explained in the spring when it launched the platform.

According to our information, So|Bond would operate in a decentralised manner, with investors not having to go through a registrar's approval to validate transactions. The platform would operate via the PoCR (Proof of Climate awaReness) blockchain launched in April by the bank and is also compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). In other words, it works with smart contracts.

Crédit Agricole is not the only bank working on this kind of project. Other institutions such as France's Société Générale and Spain's Santander also have their own dedicated platforms. SG Forge is one of the most advanced players on the subject.

Beyond platforms, the issue for the industry is to succeed in standardising tokens. This is Crédit Agricole's objective with its platform. It is also that of SG-Forge with its CAST (Compliant Architecture for Security Tokens) framework.

As a sign that the subject is being taken seriously, exchanges have taken place between Crédit Agricole and Société Générale, but for the moment they remain at the stage of mere discussions 💬.

This summer, the Group's custodian arm, CACEIS, obtained its registration as a digital asset service provider (DASP). The registration relates to digital asset custody services.