Today, FinClear, one of Australia’s largest listed securities settlement firms, has launched a blockchain-based platform for tokenized unlisted securities, FCX. It uses Digital Asset’s Daml smart contract language, the same one used in the stalled replacement for ASX CHESS.

One of Australia’s Big Four banks offers a facility to automate the movement of money between a bank account and cash tokens in an FCX ​​wallet. The tokenized cash is then used to settle stock purchases instantly and atomically. We don’t know which bank is involved with FCX, but ANZ was involved in a stablecoin project earlier this year.

Going back, FCX allows private companies to use the platform to issue new tokenized shares to investors. Backed by a distributed ledger, a company can manage the entire process, including offering information, documents, and settlement, providing authorized access to potential investors. Once an investor pays for the stock, it appears instantly in their FCX wallet. The issuer can control the entire process.

The solution allows companies to easily manage the list of investors, the limit table. And FCX plans to enable secondary trading of private stocks next year.

“The FCX platform combines the technological and regulatory expertise and rigor to securely tokenize securities, which is a totally different proposition to a cryptocurrency,” said David Ferrall, FinClear’s founder and CEO. “We are applying our extensive experience in highly regulated listed markets to provide unlisted companies and investors with the security they deserve.”

Three companies are using the platform so far, including FinClear itself, givvable, and Circle In.

While blockchain is often seen as democratizing finance, as with many other jurisdictions, Australia restricts access to private company offerings to “sophisticated” investors, the equivalent of accredited investors.

Some see unlisted securities as low-hanging fruit for distributed ledger applications. That’s due to efficiencies in public markets and the growing number of unicorns that remain private. In the United States, the DTC is moving forward with its Project Whitney with plans to launch a private stock and digital asset solution, the Digital Securities Management (DSM) Platform, subject to SEC approval.

Some of the more institutional offerings include daura from Switzerland, which has collaborated with SIX Digital Exchange, ADDX in Singapore, and LiquidShare from France, which also uses Daml. There are several public blockchain security platforms, such as iStox, Securitize, and Tokeny.