Introducing Digital Settlement House (DiSH)
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has introduced a new digital settlement service designed to bring real commercial bank money onto blockchain rails. This innovative service, named Digital Settlement House (DiSH), facilitates instant settlement across both blockchain-based and traditional payment networks. It operates continuously, 24/7, and supports multiple currencies and jurisdictions, according to an announcement made on Thursday.
At the heart of the DiSH platform is DiSH Cash, which functions as a ledger-based representation of commercial bank deposits. Instead of utilizing stablecoins, the system employs tokenized claims on actual bank deposits. LSEG positions this as providing a "real cash leg" for various financial transactions, including foreign exchange, securities, and digital asset trades.
LSEG stated, "With LSEG DiSH, market participants will be able to conduct PvP [payment-versus-payment] or DvP [delivery-versus-payment] and settlements using any asset, orchestrating payments on any connected network, digital and traditional."
Addressing Long-Standing Settlement Challenges
LSEG developed the DiSH platform to resolve persistent issues within post-trade settlement processes. Historically, cash and assets have been immobilized for extended periods, sometimes hours or days, due to slow processing times and fragmented systems.
The global financial markets infrastructure and data provider highlighted that the service also empowers users to mitigate settlement risk. This is achieved through shorter settlement timelines, synchronized settlement, and enhanced collateral availability.
This launch follows a successful proof-of-concept conducted in collaboration with Digital Asset and a consortium of major financial institutions on the Canton Network. During these trials, trades involving various assets and currencies were successfully executed. Tokenized commercial bank deposits were used as the cash component for each transaction, with the ownership of these deposits meticulously recorded on the DiSH ledger.
The Growing Role of Stablecoins in Market Infrastructure
LSEG's strategic move occurs as stablecoins increasingly integrate into the foundational infrastructure of global finance, extending their influence beyond their initial crypto-native applications. This trend is highlighted in a recent outlook report from Moody's. The report indicated that stablecoins facilitated approximately $9 trillion in settlement volume during 2025, marking an 87% surge compared to the previous year. This growth was primarily fueled by onchain activity rather than conventional bank-to-bank transfers.
Moody's further observed that fiat-backed stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits are evolving into forms of "digital cash." These are being adopted for critical functions such as liquidity management, collateral movement, and settlement within an increasingly tokenized financial ecosystem.