Tokenised settlement needs a business case beyond the pilot.

Which problem should the project solve?

For a bank or infrastructure investor considering tokenised settlement, the business case depends on who participates and which transaction becomes less costly. A shared technical design is not enough to establish commercial value across institutions. Start with settlement delays, the funding tied up between trade and completion, and the reconciliation work each participant performs today.

If the team cannot name a measurable operational outcome, platform selection is premature. The business case should separate migration and integration costs from the cost of running existing infrastructure in parallel.

What to test in a pilot.

Describe the full transaction lifecycle, including participant failure and recovery. Establish who controls access, how errors are corrected and where the definitive record of the obligation sits. A successful transfer demonstration does not answer these questions.

Then assess liquidity needs and the minimum participation needed for the pilot to be useful. Dependencies on partner onboarding should be explicit in the delivery plan, rather than hidden in assumptions about future network growth.

Make the investment decision in stages.

Agree conditions for progressing from research to a limited pilot and then to operations. Each stage needs a verifiable outcome, budget and stop conditions. The legal classification of instruments and settlement finality require jurisdiction-specific assessment with relevant specialists.