London Stock Exchange to Tokenize Its 100 Largest Listed Companies With Payward

The UK’s equity markets are about to undergo a major modernization, with the news reported by the Financial Times that the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has agreed to partner with Payward, Kraken’s parent company, to tokenize the 100 largest publicly listed companies on the LSE. Tokens will be issued under Payward’s xStocks framework and they said that the products will become available within weeks to eligible investors in more than 110 countries. 

However, UK-based investors will not have access as xStocks still aren’t available domestically. This means products built on British blue chips will trade onchain for overseas users except in Britain when the rollout begins. So far no companies have been named nor is there any confirmed launch date.  

LSE 24 Doesn’t Launch Until 2027

After passing the necessary regulatory approvals, the LSE also plans to list xStocks on LSE 24, its 24/5 trading platform which is scheduled to go live in the first half of next year. Exchange traded products are set to come first and client testing is said to be done before the end of this year. Most notably, Payward and the LSE said it will explore fully fungible equity tokens carrying the same rights as ordinary shares. 

Nearly every tokenized equity trading today is a wrapper. Investors get price exposure through a token backed by shares sitting with a custodian, without the voting rights or the direct claim that comes with holding the stock itself. A 300-year-old exchange saying out loud that it wants to close that gap is a different signal from a crypto platform saying it.

xStocks Was Losing the Issuance Race Before This

Tokenized equities now sit at roughly $2.5 billion, up about 267% year to date, as per rwa.xyz. Ondo leads with around $840 million. xStocks held around $606 million in August. Binance’s bStocks was already at about $593 million, two months after launching.

Binance won that ground on distribution. It brought new users into tokenized stocks rather than pulling them off competing platforms, which is the harder version of the trade and the one that compounds. Payward cannot answer that directly. Kraken’s user base is large but it is not Binance-large, and no amount of listing velocity fixes a reach problem.

Supply Is the Only Lane Payward Had Left

So the LSE deal is a supply-side answer to a demand-side loss. Exclusive access to the FTSE’s top names, distributed to 110 countries, wrapped in the credibility of an exchange that has been operating since the 1600s. Binance can list faster. It cannot list what it does not have.

Whether that holds depends entirely on exclusivity. If LSEG signs similar agreements with other issuers over the next year, Payward’s advantage lasts about as long as the paperwork takes. If it doesn’t, xStocks becomes the only venue outside the US where a trader can get onchain exposure to the London market, and inventory starts doing the work that distribution couldn’t.

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