CIMB Islamic Bank has settled a tokenized sukuk using tokenized deposits, the first time the two have been combined in a single settlement in Malaysia. The pilot, announced on August 27, 2026, ran inside Bank Negara Malaysia’s Digital Asset Innovation Hub and settled RM1.38 billion (about $342 million) of Islamic securities against tokenized commercial bank money.
The tokenized tranche was part of a RM1.68 billion issuance under CIMB Islamic Bank’s RM10 billion Senior Sukuk Wakalah Programme. Twelve institutional investors subscribed to it. The remaining RM300 million was issued as conventional sukuk. Tenors range from five to 15 years.
Both legs of the trade settle on one ledger
A tokenized deposit is a deposit booked as a liability of a commercial bank and represented on a distributed ledger. The holder keeps a claim on the bank, and the token serves as the transfer instrument.
Delivery-versus-payment settlement ties together two transfers, one for the security and one for the cash. The two usually travel over separate systems, which creates a delay and leaves counterparty risk open in between. Tokenizing both legs on the same ledger lets them execute together, with delivery of the security conditional on the transfer of funds.
The tokenization layer changes neither the sukuk’s economic structure nor its compliance with Islamic finance principles. The securities remain governed by the existing program documentation. The digital representation covers only how they are recorded and how they move.
The pilot is one of three in the central bank’s sandbox
Bank Negara Malaysia, the country’s central bank, opened the Digital Asset Innovation Hub in June 2025 as a controlled testing environment. It says it engaged more than 30 domestic and international players, from both the bank and non-bank sectors, before selecting use cases:
- a ringgit-backed stablecoin for business-to-business settlement, run by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Capital A;
- a tokenized deposit project led by Maybank;
- a tokenized deposit project led by CIMB, which includes the sukuk pilot.
The central bank intends to provide greater clarity on the use of ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits by the end of 2026. It says the work could be a precursor to its own research on a wholesale central bank digital currency.
Finance Minister Amir Hamzah Azizan framed the pilot as a test of how digital financial assets and commercial bank money operate together. “The objective is not digitalisation for its own sake, but to explore whether technology can make financial markets more efficient, transparent and connected while preserving strong standards of governance, investor protection and Shariah compliance,” he said. CIMB Group CEO Novan Amirudin pointed to settlement speed and capital efficiency: “Greater automation and faster settlement could reduce friction in financial transactions, improve liquidity management and increase capital efficiency.”
Coupons, secondary trading, and redemption are still untested
The pilot ran in a controlled environment with a small number of selected participants. Automated coupon payments, secondary-market transfers, and redemption at maturity are among the possible next uses, but none has been tested yet. The settlement asset is still commercial bank money, which sets the design apart from experiments that settle in central bank money.
Malaysia joins a string of similar projects in Asia and Europe on settling tokenized assets. What sets this pilot apart is its market: sukuk, whose settlement is subject to the same constraints as that of conventional bonds.