Google Cloud and CME Group Pilot Distributed Ledger for Trading

Google Cloud and derivatives marketplace CME Group said Tuesday (March 25) that they are piloting solutions for wholesale payments and tokenization of assets.

CME successfully completed the first phase of integration and testing of Google Cloud’s distributed ledger, Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), the companies said in a Tuesday press release.

The companies added that they will begin direct testing with market participants later this year and plan to launch new services in 2026.

The GCUL distributed ledger is designed to simplify the management of accounts and assets, facilitate transfers on a private and permissioned network, and be easily integrated and used by financial institutions in traditional finance, according to the release.

“Google Cloud Universal Ledger has the potential to deliver significant efficiencies for collateral, margin, settlement and fee payments as the world moves toward 24/7 trading,” CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said in the release.

Rohit Bhat, general manager, financial services at Google Cloud, said in the release that the partnership with CME Group to develop this solution demonstrates how “Google Cloud helps partners transform their businesses through strategic collaborations and modern infrastructure, unlocking significant opportunities for the global financial market.”

Distributed ledger technology has long been promised to upend traditional financial services by disintermediating everything that banks do — from settlements to extending credit to investing to sending and storing money, PYMNTS reported in December 2023.

Both the public and private iterations of blockchain technology promise some version of faster, more secure and more transparent transactions, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Solana collaboration, “Blockchain’s Benefits for Regulated Industries.”

The report found that as financial institutions tokenize real-world assets, FinTech experiment with programmable payments, and more of consumers’ and businesses’ financial lives move onto the blockchain, the line between public and private chains is set to blur even further.

In October, digital payments firm SKUx and consumer packaged goods giant Mondelez said they wrapped up the first phase of a partnership in which they were working on a payments innovation project in conjunction with open source enterprise distributed ledger technology network Hedera.

The companies said they found that the project was delivering unmatched transparency and demonstrated the potential of blockchain.