In the APAC region, market infrastructures vary widely. How does CMA see its role in coordinating processes across different markets, especially with platforms like DEPO/X?
Differences in market structures, regulatory frameworks, and operational practices are not unique to Asia Pacific — they exist across most of the 60 countries where CMA operates.
Our role is to provide a platform that accommodates this diversity without imposing uniformity.
With DEPO/X, we focus on enabling local institutions to configure the system to their own rules and processes while maintaining alignment with international standards such as ISO 20022 and Principles for Financial Market Infrastructure (PFMI).
This balance between local adaptability and global compatibility has been central to our work in all markets, including Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Brunei, where the same core system supports distinct legal, regulatory, and operational frameworks.
CMA’s contribution lies in facilitating interoperability and process consistency where it brings value, while preserving each market’s autonomy in defining how its post-trade infrastructure should function.
How has DEPO/X been received by CSDs and market participants in APAC, and what specific gaps in the region’s post-trade ecosystem is it designed to address?
In the APAC markets, the DEPO/X platform has demonstrated its ability both to replace legacy systems and to build entirely new infrastructures from scratch, strengthening operational resilience and enabling modern post-trade processes.
DEPO/X represents the third generation of CMA’s depository technology. It addresses several persistent challenges observed across markets: the transition from batch-based to real-time processing, the ability to manage rapidly expanding investor bases, and the inclusion of integrated modules for collateral management, corporate actions, and securities lending.
It also enhances transparency and accessibility for market participants, including beneficial owners, through standardised interfaces and data models.
By combining proven technology with adaptability to local regulatory and operational environments, DEPO/X enables markets to achieve greater efficiency, scalability, and readiness for accelerated settlement cycles such as T+1 and beyond.
Your partnership with Pakistan’s Raast instant payment system represents a cross-over between payments and securities. How do you see this model scaling to other APAC markets with similar needs?
Both Raast, the national instant payment system, and Prism+, the upgraded real time gross settlement (RTGS) and securities settlement platform, were delivered by CMA for the State Bank of Pakistan. Based on CMA’S RTS/X and DEPO/X platforms, together they demonstrate how payment and securities infrastructures can be designed to operate in a coordinated manner while remaining distinct systems under a unified policy and operational framework.
This model shows how integration at the architectural and data levels can enhance liquidity management, enable real-time settlement, and support broader policy objectives such as financial inclusion and monetary control. The same principles can be applied in other markets where payment and post-trade systems are being modernised in parallel.
We are continuing this discussion even further — it was recently announced that Raast will be integrated with BUNA, the cross-border payment platform operated by the Arab Monetary Fund, for which CMA is also the technology provider. This development marks a practical step toward connecting national systems into regional networks, and CMA looks forward to contributing to the construction of such frameworks that promote interoperability and financial integration across markets.
What opportunities or challenges do you see in deploying platforms like in APAC, given diverse levels of market maturity and regulatory readiness?
CMA’s latest generation of RTGS and securities settlement infrastructure, underpinning Prism+, is designed to operate across a wide range of institutional and regulatory contexts. The Asia Pacific region, with its mix of advanced and developing markets, reflects this diversity particularly strongly.
CMA has long been at the forefront of the PFMI aligned innovation in the region. In 2015, the Central Bank of Brunei implemented the region’s first ISO 20022-based RTGS system, delivered by CMA in cooperation with SWIFT. Prism+ continues this direction by combining RTGS and securities settlement capabilities within a modern, real-time architecture and ensuring full compatibility with instant payment systems.
The opportunities lie in helping markets modernise core infrastructures while aligning with international standards.
The main challenges are not technical but institutional, including regulatory alignment, participant readiness, and the management of transformation across complex financial ecosystems.
CMA’s experience shows that a phased and collaborative approach with national authorities remains the most effective path toward sustainable modernisation.
With markets like India already on T+1 and global momentum building, how does a platform like Prism+ support CSDs in APAC to meet the demands and will that be something you would be using for the European transition as well?
Prism+ was developed with accelerated settlement cycles in mind. Its architecture supports real-time transaction processing and is fully capable of operating in T+1 or even T+0 environments.
The system’s design allows for seamless coordination between the RTGS and central securities depository (CSD) layers, which is essential for achieving faster settlement while maintaining liquidity efficiency and operational resilience.
The experience gained from implementing Prism+ in Pakistan and similar projects in Asia contributes directly to the readiness of the same technology for use in other regions, including Europe, where regulatory and operational shifts toward shorter cycles are underway.
Ultimately, achieving T+1 or T+0 is less a technological challenge and more a question of market synchronisation and regulatory alignment.
CMA’s approach focuses on providing the technological foundation that can support these transitions while allowing each market to adopt changes at its own pace.
APAC has seen multiple cross-border linkages between CSDs in recent years. How does CMA’s technology underpin or facilitate interoperability in the region?
Interoperability has been a core design principle of CMA’s post-trade systems from the beginning. DEPO/X includes dedicated functionality for inter-CSD connectivity and cross-border settlement, allowing institutions to exchange data and process transactions securely across jurisdictions.
The platform is built on a multi-entity, multi-currency architecture that uses ISO 20022 as its native messaging standard and follows an API-first design.
This approach ensures efficient, structured, and standardised data exchange with both regional and international market infrastructures, allowing national depositories to participate in regional integration initiatives while maintaining their own regulatory and operational control.
CMA’s roadmap also reflects the gradual evolution of financial markets toward the use of digital representations of financial instruments. The focus is on enabling these developments within existing infrastructures through a hybrid model, where conventional and digital assets can operate side by side.
This evolutionary path allows institutions to adopt new technologies at their own pace while ensuring continuity, interoperability, and compliance with established standards.
How is CMA adapting its platforms to ensure CSDs remain central in a digital asset ecosystem?
CSDs play a critical role as trusted entities for recording ownership, managing settlement, and maintaining the integrity of financial markets.
CMA’s approach is to strengthen this role rather than redefine it. Our systems are being developed to support both traditional and digitally issued instruments within a unified framework.
In practical terms, DEPO/X already includes functionality for the registration, safekeeping, and settlement of digital instruments alongside conventional securities.
The architecture is designed for API-based integration with external networks, distributed ledger platforms, and potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) infrastructures, while maintaining the same levels of governance, auditability, and risk management expected from a CSD.
CMA views this evolution as incremental, not disruptive. The objective is to provide a hybrid environment in which CSDs can extend their existing responsibilities to new forms of assets, ensuring that the core principles of transparency, central control, and regulatory oversight continue to apply as technology and market structures evolve.
Looking ahead, what are CMA’s top priorities in APAC over the next three to five years, and where do you expect the biggest breakthroughs in CSD technology to come from?
CMA’s priorities in the Asia Pacific region will focus on supporting modernisation of financial market infrastructures and advancing regional and cross-regional integration initiatives. We are particularly focused on helping institutions strengthen their autonomy and resilience through platforms that combine efficiency, transparency, and control at the national level.
From a technology perspective, the most significant breakthroughs are expected in data-driven intelligence, structured APIs, and modular architectures that allow interoperability across systems and regions. These technologies not only facilitate links between peers but also enable integration with new components such as digital registries or settlement modules that rely on emerging technologies.
The broader direction of the market points toward tokenised forms of money and assets, which will bring supervision, compliance, and policy logic closer to the infrastructure itself. CMA’s role is to support this transition through measured innovation, ensuring that modernisation enhances sovereignty and trust rather than simply accelerating transactions.
The future of financial infrastructure, in our view, will not be defined by speed alone, but by systems that move smarter and remain aligned with policy and regulatory frameworks.
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