Korea Securities Depository Begins Building Settlement Platform for Unlisted Shares, Fractional Investments

Korea Securities Depository said on August 7 that it has started building dedicated clearing and settlement infrastructure for over-the-counter trading in unlisted shares and fractional investments, with a launch targeted by year-end.

The platform will be based on electronic securities and will adopt a T+1 settlement cycle, one day faster than the existing securities market. It will be developed as a standalone module, separate from current clearing and settlement systems for the stock market and K-OTC, laying the groundwork to accommodate new products such as security tokens, or STs.

Once completed, the infrastructure will allow settlement between securities firms through the depository even when buyers and sellers use linked accounts at different brokerages. That would remove a limitation in the current sandbox, where trades are only possible between accounts at the same securities firm, and improve trading convenience and market liquidity.

The platform will cover four over-the-counter operators: two for unlisted shares — Naver Pay Unlisted and Seoul Exchange Unlisted — and two for fractional investment — the KDX Consortium and the NXT Consortium, also known as Nextrade.

Korea Securities Depository plans to conduct mock-market tests in October and November and complete the infrastructure by December.

Han Kyung-woo, Hankyung.com reporter case@hankyung.com