How Tokenization and Stablecoins Are Quietly Reshaping Financial Infrastructure
Introduction
While many are still comparing price charts, a quiet but fundamental restructuring is underway in the engine room of the financial system. Money moves faster, settlement moves closer to the transaction time, and ownership can be transferred digitally without piles of paper or manual intermediate steps. Stablecoins and the tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs) are no longer a side topic; they are becoming the invisible infrastructure on which modern financial processes run.
Why is this relevant now? First, because usage is measurable: record levels in stablecoin volumes, growing amounts in tokenized money market products, and a clear trend towards turning assets into digital, transferable units. Second, because regulation is catching up. In Europe, MiCAR creates rules for issued, asset‑backed tokens. The result is less hype and more craftsmanship – and that is the real story.
Background and context
Tokenization means representing a real‑world asset – for example shares in money market funds, bonds, gold or receivables – as a digital representation on distributed‑ledger technology (DLT). What matters is that the associated rights can be clearly assigned and that transfers are immediately recorded in the ledger. Ownership, transfer and settlement become a continuous, auditable process.
Stablecoins are digital money pegged to a reference asset, usually the euro or the US dollar. From a corporate perspective, headlines matter less than functionality: 24/7 availability, programmable workflows, rapid finality and the ability to tightly link payment, delivery and accounting.
Finality and settlement risk are the business lens on the topic. The faster a transaction is final, the lower the counterparty risk – and the easier it becomes to automate processes. Moving from T+2 to T+0 is not a marketing slogan; it changes liquidity planning, collateral management and the interaction with accounting.
Regulation in Europe, in particular MiCAR, provides the rulebook for certain types of tokens, such as e‑money tokens. It is not a full insurance policy for every detail, but it gives issuers and users orientation and opens the door for credible euro solutions once issuers have done their homework.
Analysis
Facts and figures: usage instead of buzzwords
The debate is clearly shifting from price discussions to actual usage. Stablecoins are reaching new highs in transaction volumes, and the market for tokenized assets excluding stablecoins is growing noticeably. Large institutions are proving that the idea works: tokenized money market funds and short‑term government bonds as cash equivalents, gold tokens as a commodity example, and early experiments with securities. These developments are less spectacle than infrastructure. They show that digital representations of real assets can function in production environments and that market participants are willing to build processes on top of them.
Four phases of infrastructure change
Phase 1 – stablecoin rails: The proof of concept is complete. Digital, asset‑backed money can circulate at scale, with continuous availability, fast finality and often lower transaction costs.
Phase 2 – cash equivalents and commodities: Institutions tokenize money‑market‑like products and commodities. Custody, issuance and the surrounding compliance layers are becoming more professional. This phase creates the building blocks for what follows.
Phase 3 – securities and complex RWAs: Step by step, equities, private equity stakes, real estate and receivables portfolios are addressed. Here, accounting, tax treatment, corporate‑actions capability and auditability matter. The decisive factor is not technology alone, but its ability to plug into day‑to‑day corporate reality.
Phase 4 – full integration: Digital assets and digital money become standard building blocks in treasury, collateral and supply‑chain processes. The cadence comes from API‑ and event‑driven architectures; legacy systems remain connected but no longer dictate the pace.
Who is building what?
Issuers and asset managers transfer established products into digital wrappers and test new settlement logics. Banks and payment providers build the ramps, custody and settlement services and develop offerings around compliance and reporting. Technology and infrastructure providers deliver the ledger layers, identity and rules frameworks and integration components. Supervisors design guardrails, sandboxes and transition regimes. Together they make sure that visions turn into robust processes.
Technology and process: what matters under the hood
The visible surface is unspectacular: an invoice is paid and an asset changes ownership. The difference lies underneath.
Wallet and custody models define roles, rights and keys, including emergency and delegation procedures. ERP and API integration move booking and document handling into event‑driven flows, including clean reference data such as issuer, asset ID and reserves. Interoperability determines how well different ledger infrastructures and services can connect without creating new silos. The compliance stack of KYC and AML, monitoring and audit trail makes the whole setup auditable and ready for supervisors.
What does this mean for CFOs and mid‑sized companies?
In the euro area, it is still difficult today to move straight into implementation. Established euro stablecoins with meaningful scale are only just emerging, and many building blocks are still in motion. That is precisely why awareness and capability are the most important steps now.
Start with a short, focused learning window of two to three sessions in which finance, treasury, IT and legal speak the same language. What does tokenization concretely mean for transfer of ownership, settlement and reporting? How do stablecoins work in practice, from issuance to accounting? Which questions arise around accounting and tax? This shared vocabulary is the basis for assessing opportunities and risks realistically.
In parallel, it is worth sketching a responsible pilot scenario, explicitly without launching it right away. Describe what a small use case would look like. Which process step would be affected? Which KPIs would you measure, for example settlement time, error rates or fees? Which data and documents would accounting need, and who would play which role? This exercise creates clarity, reduces friction and can be activated as soon as robust euro stablecoin offerings become available.
You should also examine data and interfaces – technology‑agnostic and with immediate benefit. Does your ERP support event‑based bookings? Are API connections performant enough to run payment and reconciliation processes close to real time? Can token attributes such as issuer, asset ID and reserves be mapped cleanly into your chart of accounts and document logic? These housekeeping tasks pay off in every scenario, regardless of whether the market tips in six or eighteen months.
As a third building block, a lightweight risk framework is useful. Capture on a single page how you classify issuer and counterparty risk, legal and accounting questions and operational risks such as key management. The result is a simple decision traffic light showing when a pilot is acceptable and when it is not.
Conclusion
In short, today is less about pressing the start button and more about understanding, measuring and preparing. Those who now tidy up capabilities, data and processes will later be able to pilot quickly and in a controlled way instead of having to clarify the basics first.
Tokenization and stablecoins are not a side topic but an infrastructure upgrade that brings speed, transparency and automation to corporate processes. Over the next three to five years, treasury‑related use cases are likely to expand. More complex real world assets will follow once legal, accounting and reporting paths are reliable. It is worth monitoring the topic systematically and laying the internal foundations now so that you are ready when viable euro‑denominated offerings emerge.