Securities clearing and settlement provider Euroclear has made a strategic investment in Singapore’s blockchain-based infrastructure provider Marketnode. This is Euroclear’s first investment in Asia and is intended to help strengthen its position in the region.

Euroclear looks toward APAC

Marketnode operates two platforms: the Gateway tokenization service and Fundnode investment fund infrastructure, which provides a platform for transaction management, funds processing, and recordkeeping.

Fundnode will strengthen Euroclear’s FundsPlace “one-stop-shop fund offering.” Euroclear CEO for APAC Philippe Laurensy said in a statement:

“This first strategic investment in Asia reinforces the region’s importance to Euroclear’s positioning and business growth.”

The size of the Euroclear investment was not disclosed. Euroclear joins the SGX Group’s Singapore Exchange, Singapore’s state-owned Temasek fund and HSBC bank as co-owners of Marketnode.

HSBC entered Marketnode’s shareholders when it participated in Marketnode’s Series A funding in May. SGX and Temasek were co-founders of Marketnode in 2021.

A tightening web of securities settlement technologies

Temasek managing director of investment Pradyumna Agrawal said Euroclear’s involvement in Marketnode recognized “Marketnode’s efforts and potential in further developing the global digital infrastructure space.”

Marketnode was one of the original participants in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s large-scale ongoing Project Guardian tokenization trial.

Related: Singapore central bank reports on tokenized asset network models after trials

Singapore is a hotspot of blockchain development. It ranked first among several pioneering jurisdictions for cryptocurrency adoption in the Henley Crypto Adoption Index 2024.

Euroclear, which is a mainstay of TradFi infrastructure, invested in blockchain-based payment solution Fnality in March 2022 and again in November 2023 to get a toehold in digital assets. It had processed nearly $1 quadrillion in securities transactions the year before.

Before that, Euroclear was a participant in an early experiment with Deutsche Boerse’s blockchain security lending platform in 2019. In 2021, it participated in a French central bank digital currency pilot.

Euroclear worked with SWIFT and several other global financial services providers on interoperability. It initiated a digital securities issuance service and settled a 100-million euro ($106 million) digital World Bank bond in October 2023, and worked with Digital Asset on securities tokenization in October 2024.