BNY Mellon has launched a blockchain-based transfer agency platform that will record fund transactions and investor ownership onchain. The initiative covers a business that services approximately $8.6 trillion in assets across 7.6 million investor accounts, significantly expanding blockchain’s role beyond pilot projects.
A transfer agent maintains official records of fund ownership, processes subscriptions and redemptions, and keeps investor registers up to date. Traditionally, these records are maintained across multiple databases operated by different financial institutions. BNY Mellon’s new platform instead creates a shared blockchain-based record that participating institutions can reference simultaneously, reducing reconciliation work and improving transparency.
The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) is the world’s largest custodian bank, safeguarding more than $59 trillion in assets under custody and administration for asset managers, pension funds and other institutional investors. While the bank will continue supporting conventional recordkeeping systems, executives described the digital transfer agency as a parallel infrastructure designed for the next generation of tokenized financial products.
Tokenization refers to issuing digital representations of real-world financial assets on a blockchain. Supporters argue the technology can shorten settlement times, lower operational costs and eventually enable markets to operate continuously instead of being restricted to traditional trading hours.
Among the first expected users are BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, BNY’s Dreyfus money market fund business, and Scottish investment manager Baillie Gifford. Baillie Gifford plans to use the platform for the United Kingdom’s first fully native regulated tokenized fund, where fund ownership exists directly on a blockchain.
The participation announcement continues BlackRock’s broader tokenization strategy. Earlier filings showed the asset manager working with BNY Mellon to introduce blockchain-recorded share classes for one of its Treasury money market funds, gradually integrating distributed ledger technology into existing investment products rather than replacing them outright.
BNY has also outlined plans to introduce 24/7 settlement for tokenized U.S. Treasury securities by 2027, suggesting a phased rollout of blockchain infrastructure across its custody and asset servicing businesses.
