Paxos's subsidiary, Paxos Securities Settlement Company (PSSC), received full registration as a clearing agency from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 28, 2026 — making it the first and only blockchain-native firm authorized to operate as a central securities depository (CSD) for U.S. equities. The SEC formally granted the registration via order 34-104977, issued March 11.
A CSD sits at the core of post-trade infrastructure: after a stock trade executes, a CSD handles the actual exchange of cash for legal ownership, maintains ownership records, and manages settlement finality. In the U.S. equities market, that function has been held almost exclusively by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) for decades. PSSC now sits alongside it as a regulated alternative.
The registration is the end of a seven-year path. The SEC granted Paxos a no-action letter in 2019, allowing the firm to begin development. In February 2020, PSSC went live in a settlement pilot clearing daily U.S. equity transactions with Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and Societe Generale as participants. That pilot ran under provisional no-action relief; the March 11 order converts that relief into a full, permanent registration.
"Our clearing agency registration is the result of seven years of work with the SEC, beginning with our No-Action Letter in 2019 and the settlement pilot we operated with some of the world's largest and most sophisticated financial institutions," said Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-founder of Paxos.
The practical difference between PSSC and DTCC is settlement speed. U.S. equity markets moved to a T+1 settlement cycle in 2024, meaning trades clear one business day after execution. Blockchain-based clearing can compress that to same-day or near-instant settlement, freeing locked collateral and reducing counterparty exposure during the settlement window.
For real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, the registration removes a structural barrier. Institutional participants now have a regulated pipeline to clear and settle digital asset trades involving traditional equities — a prerequisite for tokenized equity products to be taken seriously by large asset managers and banks.
The approval lands on a firm with established regulatory coverage. Paxos holds an OCC charter in the U.S., a MAS license in Singapore, and operates under FIN-FSA supervision in Europe. Its white-label infrastructure is already embedded with PayPal, Mastercard, Interactive Brokers, and Mercado Libre. The clearing registration adds a new layer to that platform — one that lets institutional partners run regulated stock clearing alongside Paxos's existing digital asset tooling.