BNY Mellon Puts Fund Ownership Records on the Blockchain With New Digital Transfer Agency

Bank of New York Mellon introduced its Digital Transfer Agency this week, placing official fund ownership records directly on blockchain infrastructure — Ethereum and Solana initially, with XRPL not in the first rollout — according to coverage in Crowdfund Insider and Bitget News. BNY services roughly $8.6 trillion in assets, making it the largest custodian yet to commit its core recordkeeping to a public ledger.

Tokenization Goes Live

The launch deepens BNY's crypto ties: the bank is the primary reserve custodian for Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, and XRP traded around $3.31 as markets weighed the announcement. BNY's move follows July's landmark shift of tokenization from pilots to production — DTCC processed its first live production trades of tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on July 15 with 20-plus institutions, and Swift expanded its shared-ledger settlement test from 17 to more than 40 banks.

If fund ownership records live on a blockchain, transfers, redemptions, and collateral movements can settle in minutes instead of days — the efficiency play driving custodians toward tokenization.

The Race to Modernize the Back Office

BNY says the Digital Transfer Agency will first serve a small set of issuing clients before scaling, and the bank has separately committed to 24/7 Treasury settlement by 2027 following successful after-hours tests with Ripple's RLUSD and OpenEden's USDO. With tokenized real-world asset market cap growing from roughly $26.2 billion to $29.4 billion across July, custodians are competing to be the ledger institutions trust first.