Deutsche Bank-Backed Taurus Starts Tokenizing German SME Loans

Taurus, a Swiss crypto custody firm backed by Deutsche Bank (DBK), has partnered with Teylor, a Zurich-based fintech lending platform specializing in the German SME marketplace, adding to the current trend for all sorts of tokenized assets.

Teylor’s credit portfolio tokens, whose structure was overseen by law firm Allen and Overy, can be admitted for secondary market trading on Taurus’ TDX marketplace, the companies said on Thursday.

The tokenization process involves a Luxembourg-based investment vehicle and is compliant with Swiss and European regulations, according to Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi. The tokenized debt product for the German SME market will receive “landmark” investment from some institutional investors in the next two weeks, Brahimi added in an interview.

“TDX market is Taurus’ other business besides custody, and we have done 20-plus transactions,” Brahimi said. “These include tokenized equity, debt, structural products and art. In terms of notional value, it’s over $1 billion so far.”

The tokenization of traditional finance has taken off globally, so it’s not surprising that crypto-friendly Switzerland is giving a range of asset classes an institutional-grade blockchain treatment.

Teylor, which offers loans between 100,000 euros ($109,000) up to 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) to Germany’s vibrant Mittelstand economy, is backed by investors like U.K. bank Barclays (BARC). The fintech firm offered just shy of $25 million of loans last month, its CEO Patrick Stäuble said in an interview.

“We give loans to businesses that make usually between five and 50 million revenues, that are kind of maybe a little bit too big for a bank branch, and a little bit too small for a corporate finance department,” Stäuble said. “The loans we are going to tokenize will be for fantastic German businesses, everything from industrials, chemicals and precision machinery to import/export.”