What Financial Services Leaders Need To Know About Tokenized Infrastructure

InnovationWhat Financial Services Leaders Need To Know About Tokenized InfrastructureByRavi Chamria,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)Jun 05, 2026, 01:00pm EDT​Ravi Chamria is the cofounder and CEO of Zeeve Inc. gettyThe financial services industry has been making strides toward tokenization over the last few years. Financial institutions are investing in researching use cases and launching pilots to test the viability of tokenizing real-world assets. ​Early projects simultaneously sparked excitement about tokenization’s potential and exposed weaknesses in a piecemeal approach. A 2024 Deloitte article discussed projections that "tokenization in financial services could generate trillions of dollars in new value this decade" and proofs of concept from several financial institutions. It also outlined key challenges to widespread tokenization, including regulatory compliance risks, transparency and privacy conflicts and a lack of interoperability standards. ​The early token implementations I’ve seen don’t include payment and settlement functionality. They either use stablecoins across the board or deploy a system that combines tokenized assets and traditional payment rails. But tokenizing assets without modernizing the payment infrastructure creates a broken process. Part of the process uses blockchain fintech while the rest is still rooted in legacy banking. ​An IBM report stated that “2026 will be a turning point for tokenization.” Yet traditional banks are still falling behind: “Most incumbent institutions are saddled with core banking systems and processes built for a pre-tokenized economy. Despite billions invested, most banks remain mired in protracted modernization programs.”​It’s now time to modernize the industry’s entire financial infrastructure, from assets and payments to treasury operati...