Brazil's Itaú Joins ANBIMA Tokenization Pilot for Debentures and Funds

Brazil’s biggest bank by market value is stepping deeper into tokenized finance. Itaú Unibanco has joined a large ANBIMA-led pilot to test issuance, trading, settlement and asset management for tokenized fixed-income securities and investment funds, OpenAssets announced on Aug. 11. Why it matters - The pilot, run by the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association (ANBIMA), includes more than 50 financial and capital-market organizations and aims to test the full lifecycle of capital-market products on distributed-ledger networks. - Itaú’s participation brings a major regulated bank—with broad retail, corporate and capital-markets operations—into experiments that could shape standards and infrastructure for institutional tokenization in Brazil. What OpenAssets and Itaú will do - The firms will build structured proofs of concept combining OpenAssets’ digital-asset infrastructure with Itaú’s capital-markets expertise. - Their work will evaluate architecture, technical standards, compliance and operational rules required for tokenized debentures (a common form of corporate debt in Brazil) and investment funds. - Beyond technical tests, they will advise the pilot on common tokenization standards and document operational and regulatory hurdles that would need resolving before live-market use. Assets in scope - Fixed-income instruments including debentures. - Investment funds, enabling tests of tokenization across products with different ownership, trading and administration demands. Context in Brazil’s ecosystem - Itaú is Latin America’s largest bank by market capitalization (Bloomberg, April 30) and was ranked by S&P Global as the region’s largest lender by assets (over $562 billion). Its involvement gives the pilot real-world access to large-scale banking and custody operations. - Several other major Brazilian players have been active in tokenization: Bradesco, Santander Brasil, BTG Pactual, Banco do Brasil, Banco BV, BNDES and exchange operator B3 have all shown interest or tested distributed-ledger use cases. - Private-market initiatives are also emerging: securitizer VERT Capital disclosed plans (July 2025) to place up to $1 billion of debt and receivables on the XDC Network, and Mercado Bitcoin said it intended to tokenize $200 million in products on the XRP Ledger. Tokenization has even been used in agricultural lending—farmers in Paraná tokenized dairy cows and made assets available via B3-linked infrastructure. Global parallels and regulatory angle - Similar institutional pilots are underway elsewhere. In the U.S., DTCC has been working with a large industry group (including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Circle, Nasdaq and NYSE Group) on tokenized securities, planning limited production trades ahead of a broader launch targeted for October 2026. DTCC’s DTC obtained an SEC no-action letter in December 2025 allowing its defined tokenization service for three years. - U.S. regulators have emphasized that tokenized securities are still securities and must preserve investor protections, custody arrangements and legal ownership. Transfer agents have urged the SEC to prioritize issuer-approved tokenized stocks and ETFs to avoid structures that create only indirect economic exposure without shareholder rights. What the industry hopes to learn - ANBIMA’s pilot is deliberately not trying to push a single tokenized product to market immediately. Instead, it’s testing how existing securities and funds would operate on blockchain rails under standards acceptable to banks, asset managers and regulated institutions—measuring efficiency gains and cataloging technical, operational and legal issues that emerge. Voices - “The initiative of OpenAssets and Itaú is designed to explore how tokenized assets can be issued, settled and managed within the frameworks and standards financial institutions require,” said OpenAssets Chairman and CEO Gabor Gurbacs, calling Brazil a “forward-looking” market primed to move tokenization “from exploration to production.” About OpenAssets - OpenAssets (formerly Pointsville) develops infrastructure and open standards for real-world asset tokenization and sovereign digital currencies. The company is contributing to open tokenization standards with the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust and raised $10 million in 2025—led by Valor Capital Group, with participation from Tether and members of Itaú’s founding family. Bottom line Itaú’s entry into ANBIMA’s large, multi-institution pilot signals growing institutional momentum for tokenization in Brazil. The project will be watched closely for technical standards, compliance models and practical lessons on whether blockchain rails can deliver meaningful efficiency and new product opportunities for regulated capital markets.