Industry body the World Gold Council’s latest White Paper, co-authored with Boston Consulting Group, explores the potential of “Gold as a Service” – a new platform to support the issuance and operation of scalable digital gold products.

The financial system around gold is said to be quickly digitalising.

However, while digital gold products have emerged across formats and markets, fragmentation, complexity and inconsistent processes have limited their full potential, the council points out.

It emphasises that gold needs to evolve to remain accessible, interoperable and trusted, to meet the increasing expectations from investors for assets to move seamlessly across digital platforms.

Gold as a Service would act as an open platform, connecting the physical custody of gold with the digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products.

Through standardising essential market processes such as custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption, the model aims to reduce operational complexity, improve access and enable greater consistency across digital gold products.

According to the paper, Gold as a Service would not directly be a consumer-facing product.

Instead, the intention is to support the suppliers and vendors that underpin gold product creation.

Issuers would have full ownership of their products, value propositions, brands and customer relationships.

The infrastructure would provide the underlying operating layer, bringing together core functions such as custody, vaulting, issuance, reconciliation, compliance, liquidity access and redemption.

By coordinating these elements, Gold as a Service aims to reduce operational complexity and lower barriers to entry, the paper points out.

It assures that the new infrastructure would not change what gold is, but rather, how it participates in an increasingly digital financial system.

The system is expected to allow gold to be always accessible, increasingly fungible across trusted systems and interoperable with both traditional financial infrastructure and emerging digital rails.

In terms of its operation, Gold as a Service would work on three layers.

The physical layer would coordinate the physical movement and custody of gold, working with approved vaulting, liquidity, logistics, insurance and audit partners.

It would be responsible for the operational reality that underpins trust: how gold is sourced, transported, where it sits, how it is safeguarded, and what happens when gold needs to be allocated, moved, or redeemed.

The digital layer would enable the issuance and management of digital gold products such as gold tokens, digital gold accounts, or similar products.

It would also provide the operational tools required for the product to run at scale, including monitoring, reporting and routine day-to-day management.

The connecting layer would keep the physical and digital records synchronised.

It would link the digital gold lifecycle (issuance, transfers and redemption) to gold records defined by the issuer’s product structure, providing a consistent basis for reconciliation, control and assurance.

Issuers would create and manage their products on an issuer-facing platform, which would act as the user interface that ties these layers together.

The paper highlights potential benefits as including market liquidity deepening and becoming more efficient as products gather under a shared infrastructure.

The aggregation of venues to redeem physical gold could power a globally trusted redemption network, it posits.

There is also the possibility of scale driving unit costs downwards, with vaulting, insurance, audit and logistics becoming cheaper as volumes consolidate onto shared platforms.

Moreover, with increased fungibility, digital gold could become a more attractive base layer for third parties to build on, it postulates.

The paper explores how participants across the market can contribute to the next chapter of digital gold. It does not prescribe a single end design; instead, it sets out the opportunity for participants across the gold value chain and digital asset ecosystem to input into a shared, interoperable and trusted infrastructure solution along with the council.

The paper suggests three key classes of participants.

Firstly, upstream and midstream participants, including bullion banks, vault operators, logistics providers, insurers, auditors and liquidity providers, will play a pivotal role in shaping how physical gold can support scalable, digital-native use cases under shared standards of integrity, reporting and redemption.

Secondly, downstream participants, including banks, fintechs, asset managers, exchanges, wallet providers and consumer platforms, would be ideal to design the products, experiences and use cases that bring digital gold to life for end-users, building differentiated offerings on top of common infrastructure rather than fragmented stacks.

Thirdly, technology providers, market infrastructure firms and regulators have an opportunity to help define interoperable frameworks that balance innovation with resilience, governance and consumer protection.

Meanwhile, the council would work with upstream actors, such as miners, and with midstream partners, including bullion banks and other liquidity providers, to align on responsible sourcing standards, and best practices for integrity, reporting and redemption.

It would also collaborate with downstream institutions such as retail investment platforms to deliver differentiated products and use cases.

Technology providers, market infrastructure firms, and regulators would also have a role to play in shaping resilient frameworks that balance innovation with governance and consumer protection.

The council’s role would be to act as a neutral convener and system orchestrator, consulting market participants, facilitating participation and derisking progress as the industry engages in challenging and refining this future.