CMTA
The Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) is a not-for-profit association in Geneva that writes common standards for issuing, distributing and trading securities as tokens on a distributed ledger. Lenz & Staehelin, Swissquote Bank and Temenos founded it in 2018 with the support of EPFL. The CMTA sees itself as an independent standard-setter for the use of blockchain technology in capital markets.
The members of the CMTA are banks, law firms, technology companies and industry bodies, among them UBS, Pictet, Lombard Odier, SIX Digital Exchange and Taurus. The association publishes legal standards for tokenizing shares and debt instruments, a custody standard and the open-source smart contract CMTAT. Companies that follow these standards can have their tokenized shares or bonds certified by the CMTA.
Tokenization standards for shares and debt
The CMTA published the current version of its standard for the tokenization of shares of Swiss corporations in September 2024. A second standard from May 2025 covers debt instruments such as bonds, notes and structured products. Both guides follow Articles 973d and 973f of the Swiss Code of Obligations, which give ledger-based securities their legal effect.
The CMTA also wrote a model prospectus for the public offering of tokenized shares in Switzerland, which dates from February 2020. Its smart contracts for delivery versus payment and for conditional transfers through a rule engine complete the legal standards on the technical side.
Token standard CMTAT
The CMTA Token, short CMTAT, is an open standard for smart contracts that represent shares, debt and structured products on a blockchain. A working group of CMTA members first published it in 2022, and the reference implementation for Ethereum and other EVM chains is open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. Further versions exist for Tezos, Solana and the privacy network Aztec, the last one written by Taurus.
The core functions of CMTAT cover minting, burning, transfers, pausing and the freezing of single accounts. Optional modules add allowlists, snapshots, on-chain debt information and the rule engine for conditional transfers. ABDK Consulting audited versions 1.0 and 2.3.0, and Halborn audited version 3.0.0.
In June 2026 the CMTA connected CMTAT to the Automated Compliance Engine, a rule system from Chainlink that lets issuers manage compliance rules inside their tokens. One month later the association released CMTAT Confidential, which keeps balances private with the protocol of Zama.
Members and membership
The CMTA has three founding members, Lenz & Staehelin, Swissquote Bank and Temenos, and 42 further members from Switzerland and abroad. The banks among them range from UBS and the private banks Pictet, Lombard Odier and Union Bancaire Privée to the digital asset bank Sygnum. Law firms such as Homburger, Niederer Kraft Frey and Baker McKenzie belong to the association, and so does the market operator SIX Digital Exchange.
Industry bodies are members as well, among them the Swiss Blockchain Federation and the German Bundesverband für elektronische Wertpapiere. Further members include the custody technology firm Taurus, the security firm Halborn and the crypto ETP issuer 21Shares.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Switzerland
Custody and AML standards
The Digital Assets Custody Standard, short DACS, sets requirements and recommendations for technology that keeps the private keys of digital assets safe. Providers of professional crypto custody in Switzerland or abroad can apply for certification under DACS version 2.0, for their operations, their infrastructure or both. A separate CMTA standard from September 2024 explains how firms handle digital assets under the Swiss rules against money laundering.
Certification of tokenized shares and bonds
Swiss companies that tokenized their shares under the CMTA standard can apply for the label CMTA Tokenized Shares, and issuers of digital bonds and structured products can apply for CMTA Tokenized Debt. A legal expert and a technology provider recognized by the CMTA check the instruments and the smart contract before the label is granted. The certification marks are registered with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.
In October 2026 the CMTA recognized the programmable asset tokens of Cardano, defined in CIP-0113, as equivalent to CMTAT for this certification scheme.
Executive committee and advisory board
Jacques Iffland, a partner at Lenz & Staehelin, chairs the executive committee of the CMTA. The other members are Touradj Ebrahimi, professor at EPFL, Takis Spiliopoulos, chief executive of Temenos, and Nestor Verrier, chief operating officer of Swissquote. Fedor Poskriakov of Lenz & Staehelin is general secretary, and Rosie Ovan is head of operations.
The advisory board has a technical committee and, since October 2026, a product committee chaired by Gabi Urrutia of Halborn. Nicolas Bonvin, chief technology officer of Taurus, chairs the technical and the expert committee, succeeding Jean-Philippe Aumasson after more than eight years in those roles.
Address in Geneva
The CMTA is an association under Swiss law with its registered office in Geneva, entered in the commercial register under number CHE-408.722.286. The address of the association is Route de Chêne 30, 1208 Geneva. Members meet once a year at the general meeting, which in 2026 took place in Zurich together with a tokenization seminar on stablecoins in capital markets and on custody.
Point Zero Forum and CV Summit
The CMTA was a partner of GFTN at the Point Zero Forum 2026 in Zurich, the meeting on finance, policy and technology that GFTN runs with the Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance. In September 2026 the association was a community partner of the CV Summit at the Kongresshaus Zurich, the conference of CV Labs on institutional digital assets and AI.
CMTA and Finance Loop
Finance Loop and the CMTA were both partners of GFTN at Point Zero Forum 2026 in Zurich. Banks in Germany that issue securities under the Electronic Securities Act ask the same questions about token standards, custody and certification that the CMTA answers for Swiss ledger-based securities. Finance Loop brings people from both financial centers together at its events on tokenization and digital assets.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.