Ireland looks to tokenised money market funds as bridge between traditional and digital markets
Ireland’s funds industry is developing a model for tokenising existing money market funds that could improve collateral mobility and operational efficiency while retaining conventional fund governance and legal structures.
Ireland is positioning itself at the intersection of established fund infrastructure and digital-asset technology as the country’s funds industry explores the tokenisation of money market funds.
In a paper published by Irish Funds, its Money Market Fund Working Group argues that a “digital twin” model could provide a practical route to tokenising existing Irish MMFs without replacing the established legal and operational infrastructure underpinning them.
Under the proposed approach, the conventional off-chain share register would remain the authoritative record of legal ownership. An on-chain token would instead provide a digital representation of the investor’s entitlement, potentially allowing fund interests to be transferred and mobilised more efficiently.
The development addresses a particular issue for institutional investors using money market funds as part of their liquidity and collateral-management arrangements.
Today, an investor may need to redeem MMF holdings into cash before that cash can be transferred to a counterparty. Tokenisation could allow eligible fund interests to be mobilised more directly, potentially reducing settlement friction and the operational steps involved in moving collateral.
Irish Funds points to the experience of Aviva Investors, BlackRock and Schroders, which have launched digital-twin tokenised MMFs, as evidence that the concept is moving beyond experimentation.
The initiative also reflects a broader policy push in Ireland. The Central Bank of Ireland published a discussion paper on distributed-ledger technology and tokenisation in financial services in March 2026, while Ireland’s Funds Sector 2030 review recommended developing a pathway for investment-fund tokenisation. The Government’s Ireland for Finance Vision 2030 strategy has subsequently identified fund tokenisation as an area for development.
For Ireland’s established funds ecosystem, the significance extends beyond blockchain technology. The digital-twin model seeks to combine the legal certainty and regulatory oversight of traditional fund structures with the programmability and transferability associated with digital assets.
That makes tokenised MMFs an increasingly interesting example of how traditional investment infrastructure is evolving rather than simply being replaced by digital alternatives.