Meritz Securities and Canton Foundation explore tokenizing Korean financial assets

Meritz Securities has signed an agreement with the Canton Foundation to explore bringing Korean financial assets onto Canton and connecting them with international institutional markets.

The memorandum of understanding, announced on October 14, was signed earlier in the month at Meritz’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. The partners will assess asset tokenization and the infrastructure needed to support it, expanding their work as Korean regulations permit.

For Meritz, the work goes beyond creating digital versions of financial assets. It also includes studying how tokenized assets could be used as collateral across participating institutions.

What Meritz and Canton will explore

The partnership has three areas of focus: domestic financial assets, institutional blockchain infrastructure and cross-border uses.

The domestic work will examine ways to tokenize traditional Korean financial assets and develop business models within the country’s rules. Alongside this, Meritz and the Foundation will evaluate Canton’s privacy-enabled infrastructure for use in Korean capital markets.

The cross-border work will explore tokenization with global institutional partners, potentially involving sovereign-grade debt assets. It will also examine how tokenized high-quality liquid assets could serve as collateral—assets pledged to secure a financial obligation—and move between trading and clearing venues.

These are areas for exploration under the MOU, rather than services launched through the agreement.

The three areas of exploration in the October 14 Meritz–Canton announcement. These are planned areas of work, not services launched through the agreement.

Shinhan’s separate role in Canton

Meritz’s agreement follows Shinhan Asset Management’s approval as a Canton Super Validator in September. Shinhan became the first Korean financial institution approved for the role, with CIP-0121 recording approval on September 11.

Super Validators support Canton’s shared infrastructure and governance. Shinhan’s approved program links its rewards to milestones involving Korean institutional access, tokenized assets, settlement and related financial services.

Shinhan’s September announcement set out a phased approach, beginning with technology testing before broader activity within Korea’s regulatory framework.

This builds on Shinhan’s June agreements with the Canton Foundation. At a September 29 meeting in Seoul, the group explored how its banking, securities and asset-management businesses could work together on tokenized finance and improve international investors’ access to Korean financial products.

Meritz’s MOU and Shinhan’s Super Validator approval are separate arrangements. One establishes a collaboration to explore assets and infrastructure; the other sets out a milestone-based route for an institution’s participation in the network.

Why the collateral work matters

The most useful part of the Meritz agreement may be its focus on what happens after an asset is tokenized. A digital representation becomes more useful when an eligible institution can use it in a real transaction, including pledging it to obtain financing.

If the work leads to operational services, Korean institutions could gain additional ways to connect their assets with overseas counterparties. Canton’s design allows applications to set access and data-sharing rules, so connecting institutions need not mean making their commercial information public.

That is the potential benefit for Canton: more locally developed financial products that can interact with other institutions on the network. The practical test will be whether the planned connections become services those institutions can use. The MOU sets the scope for that work. Any implementation would remain subject to the applicable regulatory framework.