Australian bank ANZ joins Monetary Authority of Singapore-led Project Guardian

Australian bank ANZ announced Monday it has joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore-led Project Guardian, to "explore broader access to tokenized real-world assets in financial markets."

ANZ said it is partnering with Chainlink Labs and ADDX to experiment with "interoperability between private blockchains to exchange tokenized real-world assets, such as commercial paper," according to a statement .

Started in 2022, Project Guardian is a public-private tokenization collaborative designed to test the tokenization of real-world assets. Participating entities include the United Kingdom’s FCA, Switzerland’s FINMA and Japan’s FSA, in addition to financial institutions like Deutsche Bank , Citi and Apollo. The project is exploring tokenization across the fixed-income, wealth management and foreign exchange sectors.

"We’re excited to continue our collaboration with ANZ and support their market-leading digital innovation program with secure cross-chain infrastructure as part of Project Guardian," said Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov. "Interoperability is critical for financial institutions to transact with tokenized assets at scale, making Chainlink CCIP a key enabler for accelerating the growth of the tokenized economy."

Mark Evans, Head of ANZ Singapore, said the bank is aiming to "play a role in fast-tracking the development of a stable, secure digital asset ecosystem which will be essential to meeting the future needs of our customers across the region.”

ANZ has been in Singapore for 50 years, according to the statement.