IBM Launches Digital Asset Haven to Power Secure, Scalable Finance for the Blockchain Era

IBM has unveiled Digital Asset Haven, a unified platform designed for financial institutions, governments, and regulated enterprises to manage, transact, and scale their digital-asset operations with enterprise-grade security and compliance.

Developed in partnership with Dfns, a leading wallet-infrastructure provider, IBM Digital Asset Haven brings together IBM’s hybrid-cloud and security capabilities with Dfns’s custody technology, an ecosystem that has already created more than 15 million wallets for 250 clients worldwide.

The platform gives banks, asset managers, and public institutions a single system to handle the full digital-asset lifecycle, from wallet creation to settlement, across more than 40 public and private blockchains.

A Unified Hub for Regulated Institutions

IBM describes Digital Asset Haven as a “full-stack orchestration layer” that integrates fragmented systems, aligns governance with enterprise workflows, and ensures operational resilience at the scale required by regulated finance.

It combines wallet management, transaction routing, and policy-driven approvals within a modular framework that can plug directly into existing banking, payments, or capital-markets infrastructure.

Key capabilities include:

• Transaction Lifecycle Management: automated routing, monitoring, and settlement across multiple chains.
• Governance and Entitlement Management: multi-party authorization and programmable policies mirroring internal approval chains.
• Third-Party Integration: pre-built connections for KYC, AML, yield generation, and risk analytics, accessible through open APIs and SDKs.
• Flexible Key Management: hybrid support for Multi-Party Computation (MPC), IBM Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), and IBM Offline Signing Orchestrator (OSO) for cold-storage operations.

The result, IBM says, is a system that lets clients embed wallets, execute policy-aware transactions, and unify compliance across jurisdictions without compromising sovereignty or scalability.

Security Anchored in Confidential Computing

Because digital-asset operations increasingly demand hardened runtime protection, Digital Asset Haven leverages IBM Secure Execution for Linux and Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, both of which enforce hardware-level isolation for key generation, signing, and access control. This confidential-computing approach ensures that even privileged administrators cannot view or tamper with sensitive operations—a feature critical for regulated sectors such as banking and government.

The platform also integrates IBM’s Crypto Express 8S HSMs on IBM Z and LinuxONE servers, together with quantum-safe cryptography guidance to future-proof key management against emerging computational threats.

Meeting the Moment for Tokenization

With the adoption of tokenized assets and stablecoins accelerating, IBM is positioning Digital Asset Haven as the bridge between traditional finance and blockchain-based markets. Institutions worldwide are exploring tokenization to cut settlement times and offer 24/7 liquidity, but many face obstacles around integration, security, and compliance. IBM’s new platform aims to remove those barriers by delivering the same reliability standards that underpin global banking systems today.

“With IBM Digital Asset Haven, our clients can enter and expand into the digital-asset space backed by IBM’s level of security and reliability,” said Tom McPherson, General Manager for IBM Z and LinuxONE. “This unified platform delivers the resilience and data governance institutions have been asking for.”

Clarisse Hagège, CEO of Dfns, added that institutional adoption requires infrastructure matching the rigor of traditional rails:

“Together with IBM, we’ve built a platform that goes beyond custody to orchestrate the full digital-asset ecosystem.”

Availability and Outlook

IBM Digital Asset Haven will launch as a SaaS and hybrid-SaaS service in Q4 2025, with an on-premises version planned for Q2 2026. Institutions will be able to deploy it on IBM’s LinuxONE and Z systems or via cloud environments.

IBM positions the release as more than a product—it’s a strategic enabler for what the company calls “the next era of finance.” By merging confidential computing, multi-chain connectivity, and policy-driven governance into a single architecture, IBM aims to help regulated entities modernize their offerings and participate safely in the expanding digital-asset economy.

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Editorial Note: This news article has been written with assistance from AI. Edited & fact-checked by the Editorial Team.

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