Today the Swiss National Bank clarified the criteria for allowing DLT trading facilities to access to the Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC) payment system. One of the objectives of blockchain-based securities exchanges is to enable atomic settlement. This simultaneous exchange of a tokenized asset for cash ideally requires access to the payment system and an account at the central bank.
Last year Switzerland changed its laws and the Financial Market Infrastructure Act (FinMIA) allows for ‘DLT trading facilities’. These were primarily designed to enable security token trading venues, including tokenized assets or asset-backed securities (but not derivatives). Without this rule, separate licenses would be needed for trading versus custody and settlement.
For these DLT financial market infrastructures (FMIs) to access SIC, they need to be licensed by the Swiss regulator FINMA although it is the SNB that grants access to SIC. To get a FINMA license, they need to be a DLT trading facility that has at least one of these three features:
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