Early in 2026, SettleMint took a deliberate decision to focus squarely on digital asset lifecycle management for financial services, a market where its technology is among the deepest and most capable available.
SettleMint views tokenization as only the starting point for real-world assets: the real value lies in managing the full lifecycle of a digital asset, which is where most of the operational complexity sits. That means distributing the asset to eligible investors, settling trades against cash, paying coupons, processing redemptions and corporate actions, and enforcing compliance on every transfer.
DALP manages that entire lifecycle on a single platform, which is why institutions are using it to run assets in production rather than to mint tokens for pilots.
That decision is now bearing fruit. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) is expected to more than double in 2026, rising 100%+ year on year, and is on track to double again in 2027.
The market has taken notice. In the past two months, two of the most trusted names across traditional and digital finance have chosen to work with SettleMint: Ripple and IBM. Both follow SettleMint’s role earlier in the year as the technology behind Saudi Arabia’s national real estate tokenization infrastructure.
We saw the opportunity in tokenization for financial services early, and we went after it deliberately. Banks are no longer asking whether tokenization works. They are asking how quickly they can put it into production inside the systems they already trust, and that is exactly what we built DALP to do.
The backdrop: real-world assets move to center stage
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are digital tokens carrying a legally enforceable claim on an asset that exists off-chain: bonds, funds, equities and money-market instruments, commodities such as gold, and alternatives such as real estate and private credit.
The shift in sentiment has been sharp. At a roundtable hosted by SettleMint in London in October 2026, bringing together senior leaders from Euroclear, Invesco, Deutsche Börse, J.P. Morgan Kinexys, Barclays, Monzo, NatWest Markets, Commerzbank, and Schroders, there was broad consensus that the industry has entered a new era over the past 12 months. RWA tokenization, until recently seen as a niche emerging technology, is now being evaluated by most major financial institutions, driven by its potential impact on capital markets and the rapid rise of digital money such as stablecoins.
RWAs growth is clear from the data. Digital RWAs remain the smallest of the three digital asset classes at around $30 billion, but net inflows grew by around 300% in 2025, against roughly 50% for stablecoins and other digital money. For context, Digital RWAs are barely 0.01% of the roughly $300 trillion of investable assets globally. BCG’s report on the Future of Digital Assets sees potential for around 16% of investable real-world assets, roughly $88 trillion, in tokenized form by 2035.
The shift: value moves from issuance to servicing
Unlike crypto, where the token is the asset itself, a tokenized real-world asset is a legal claim on something off-chain, with coupons, redemptions, corporate actions and compliance checks continuing for years after issuance. Today each of those steps runs through a chain of intermediaries.
BCG finds tokenization’s largest economic impact sits downstream, in settlement and clearing, custody and asset servicing, where they can be automated within the instrument itself. The savings are material: $40–60 million a year for every $100 billion of investment-grade bond issuance, and $100–150 million over five years in administration costs for a $5 billion real estate fund.
M&A activity is also ramping up in the space; Bullish agreed to acquire transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion to build tokenized securities infrastructure, and Kraken and Ripple have each acquired tokenization and custody specialists. As tokenization becomes part of core market infrastructure rather than a series of bespoke projects, the question for institutions is shifting from whether to tokenize to which platform they trust to run their assets for their whole life.
Why SettleMint is positioned to capture it
DALP was built for that job. It runs the full lifecycle of an asset, issuance, distribution, trading and servicing, on a single platform. Identity and compliance rules are checked on-chain at every transfer, and delivery-versus-payment settlement is native. DALP runs across EVM networks, with Canton and the XRP Ledger on the roadmap. It deploys in the institution’s own infrastructure, whether public cloud, private cloud or on-premises, and assets are composed from templates rather than custom-coded.
Custody providers also see that the value extends to managing the full lifecycle. Under the IBM integration, IBM Digital Asset Haven provides wallet and key management, transaction approvals and governance, while DALP applies asset-eligibility and transfer rules. Ripple, which has expanded its custody capabilities over the past year through partnerships, integrations and the acquisition of Palisade, chose to partner with SettleMint for lifecycle management.
DALP also integrates with Fireblocks, DFNS and hardware security modules, and SettleMint has signed a partnership with Utila. Institutions can keep their chosen custodian and still run the full asset lifecycle on one platform.
Looking ahead
With IBM and Ripple in place, SettleMint’s focus for 2027 is converting pipeline into production deployments and taking the Ripple offering across new markets.
Global capital markets are moving on-chain, and the value is in what happens after an asset is issued. We have spent ten years building the platform to run that lifecycle, and now we have the right partners to scale it.
Adam Popat
Chief Executive Officer, SettleMint
