IBM’s latest outlook for banking and financial markets makes a bold claim: tokenisation is moving from experiment to infrastructure. In its 2026 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets, the IBM Institute for Business Value argues that the tokenised economy is no longer a fringe concept for digital asset enthusiasts, but an increasingly serious operating model for banks, asset managers and payment networks. IBM says tokenised assets, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies are moving toward a point where, by 2030, they will no longer be “experimental” but “table stakes.”
That is a strong statement, but it reflects the wider direction of travel in financial services. Over the past two years, tokenisation has shifted from pilot-stage curiosity to something much more strategic. Banks are testing tokenised deposits, fund managers are exploring on-chain fund issuance, payment providers are leaning into stablecoins, and market infrastructures are examining how digital cash and tokenised securities might settle together. The industry is no longer asking whether tokenisation has a role. It is asking where it fits, who controls the rails, and how quickly institutions can move from proofs of concept to scalable execution.
IBM’s report frames tokenisation as a way to enable near-instant transfers of assets and value, including across borders and at lower costs than traditional processes. That is the seductive part of the story, and it is easy to see why the narrative resonates. A financial system built on programmable assets and shared ledgers promises fewer intermediaries, greater transparency and a more continuous form of settlement. In a world where cross-border finance is still often slowed by batch processing, manual reconciliation and fragmented messaging, that vision has obvious appeal.
But IBM is careful not to present tokenisation as some magical regulatory bypass dressed up as innovation. The report explicitly notes that tokenisation does not remove the need for fraud controls, AML and KYC processes, privacy protections or alignment with regulatory standards. That is an important reality check. Too much digital-assets commentary still treats regulation as a nuisance rather than a core feature of financial-market design. In practice, tokenisation only becomes meaningful for large institutions if it works inside prudential, legal and operational frameworks rather than outside them.
IBM also links tokenisation to the rise of agentic AI and more automated financial workflows. The thesis here is that programmable money and programmable assets become much more powerful when paired with intelligent systems capable of triggering actions, reallocating capital or managing transactions based on predefined conditions. That may sound futuristic, but it points toward a future in which settlement, collateral movement and portfolio adjustments become increasingly automated. It is a reminder that tokenisation is not only about turning assets into digital tokens. It is also about redesigning how financial processes behave.
Still, the hardest part lies beyond the headline efficiencies.
The real challenge is not issuing a tokenised instrument or moving stablecoins across a payment flow. It is building an interoperable financial system where tokenised money, tokenised assets, compliance logic and existing market infrastructure can all work together without creating new silos. That is where many tokenisation projects will either become strategically important or remain well-branded pilot programmes.
IBM’s report is useful precisely because it captures the momentum without pretending the transition will be frictionless. The tokenised economy may indeed be coming faster than many incumbents expected. But the winners will not simply be the institutions that launch first. They will be the ones that can integrate tokenisation into real banking, real market structure and real governance. You can view the IBM Global Outlook for Banking & Financial Markets here https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/15db1d60a641f6cf
