Broadridge’s distributed-ledger repo platform processed an average of $359 billion a day in September, illustrating how blockchain is being used by financial institutions for short-term borrowing rather than memecoins or attempts to replace conventional banking.
The company, which operates in financial technology rather than the more prominent cryptocurrency sector, said the platform handled $7.5 trillion of activity during the month. The figures represent transactions processed across supported products and collateral types, not loans outstanding, and not every deal involved intraday borrowing.
Repo, short for repurchase agreement, allows one institution to temporarily exchange securities – often government bonds – for cash, with an agreement to reverse the transaction later at a slightly higher price. It functions like a secured loan: the borrower receives money and the lender holds the securities as collateral.
Banks, securities dealers and hedge funds use repo to finance bond inventories and trading positions, while money market funds and other cash-rich institutions can act as lenders. The market means firms do not have to sell long-term assets whenever short-term payments fall due.
The Office of Financial Research estimated that more than $8 trillion in Treasury-backed repo was outstanding in August 2025. The New York Fed, meanwhile, puts transactions underpinning the SOFR overnight funding benchmark at roughly $3 trillion a day. Those measurements cover different parts of the market and cannot be used to calculate Broadridge’s market share.
The need for intraday finance can be substantial. A dealer might have to send $1 billion at 09:00 and receive the same amount at 11:00. At an annualised interest rate of 5%, borrowing overnight on the usual 360-day money-market convention would cost about $138,889. A simple two-hour calculation would produce a cost of roughly $11,574, although actual intraday repo rates and charging arrangements differ.
Broadridge’s platform, known as DLR, uses a shared ledger to record the transaction. Securities remain within established custody arrangements but are represented by digital tokens that allow rights to the collateral to be transferred. Smart contracts coordinate those transfers with confirmation of the cash payment and reverse the process when the borrowing is repaid.
The cash still moves through conventional payment systems. The blockchain records the securities and obligations; it does not require a new digital currency, create additional liquidity or turn Treasury portfolios into freely circulating coins.
Broadridge expanded DLR in September to securities from G7 markets. Its reported daily averages were $365 billion in January, $362 billion in February and May, and $359 billion in September 2026 – a fall of about 1.6% from January, despite the company reporting increases compared with the same months in 2025. The figures cover selected published months rather than a complete annual series, and monthly totals are affected by the number of business days.
A Broadridge white paper quoted Societe Generale’s Michael Walsh as saying spreadsheet work had been removed and almost $1 million in annual operating costs saved. Daylight-overdraft charges reportedly fell to zero on four out of five days. Broadridge and Finadium also modelled that using DLR for 15% of intraday funding could reduce a bank’s liquidity buffer by an estimated 8% to 17%, although those are assumptions rather than guaranteed savings.
The technology cannot remove wider repo risks. A higher haircut reduces the cash advanced against the same bonds: a 2% haircut on $1 billion of government securities produces $980 million, while a 5% haircut produces $950 million. A lender can also refuse to renew a deal, forcing the borrower to find another source of funding or sell assets.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has set 31 December 2026 as the compliance date for eligible cash Treasury transactions under expanded central-clearing rules, with covered repo transactions due by 30 June 2027. Central clearing and blockchain settlement are separate functions: a central counterparty stands between trading parties, while a ledger records and coordinates delivery.
New Office of Financial Research research published on 20 October found that expanded clearing could add slightly more than $500 billion in daily transactions used to calculate SOFR while moving the rate by only about one basis point, or 0.01 percentage points. The distinction suggests that greater transaction activity does not necessarily alter borrowing costs.
Blockchain may make collateral transfers faster, but it cannot produce missing securities or guarantee that lenders will provide cash. If a bank needs $1 billion at 09:00 and expects payment at 11:00, the system can reduce delays and paperwork. If that payment fails to arrive and lenders withdraw, the bank must still find the money elsewhere.
