Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, explains how Vision 2030, regulatory alignment, and national digital infrastructure are transforming property tokenisation from pilot projects into production-grade market infrastructure.
Real-world asset tokenisation is moving from experimentation to national-scale implementation, and Saudi Arabia is positioning itself at the forefront of that shift. Anchored by Vision 2030, regulatory alignment, and institutional leadership, the Kingdom is advancing blockchain-enabled real estate infrastructure beyond pilots into live production environments — reshaping how property assets are issued, traded, financed, and governed.
Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, spoke with Sandhya D’Mello, Technology Editor, CPI Media Group, on why the Middle East is not moving too fast but entering tokenisation at precisely the right point in the technology maturity cycle.
Popat describes how national vision, proactive regulators, and secure, government-integrated platforms are enabling real estate tokenisation to function as critical infrastructure rather than a standalone tech initiative. From improving liquidity and investor access to enabling new financial products through open API ecosystems, Popat outlines how blockchain-based property markets are laying the foundations for a new digital asset economy — with the region poised to lead the next decade of tokenised finance.
Interview Excerpts:
With your global experience, where do you see the Middle East heading in its digital and tokenisation journey? Is the region too ambitious or moving too fast?
My view is simple — there’s no such thing as being too ambitious. The region should be commended for its level of ambition. At the same time, this isn’t premature. Tokenisation technology has been around for about a decade, and we’ve seen years of pilots, proofs of concept, and experimentation by leading institutions. We’re now at an inflection point. This is the moment when the industry globally moves from pilots to production.
“From our perspective as a global business working across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, this region is particularly well-positioned to lead the next phase of tokenisation over the coming decade — especially in specific, high-impact use cases like real estate.”
How did you navigate regulatory, legal, and institutional complexities to turn real estate tokenisation into sovereign national infrastructure in Saudi Arabia?
In Saudi Arabia, several critical factors aligned. First is national commitment. Under Vision 2030, there is a clear mandate to digitise sectors across the economy. That leadership-driven direction creates a highly conducive environment for transformation at scale. Second is regulatory alignment. The regulators are proactive, supportive, and directly involved in shaping the framework alongside the ecosystem. Regulation isn’t being designed in isolation — it’s evolving in parallel with the solutions being implemented. That level of engagement is essential for anything to scale beyond pilots. Third is institutional leadership. At the Real Estate Registry (RER), we’re working with visionary leaders who are driving this forward as national infrastructure, not just a tech experiment. Finally, the technology itself is ready. There are now partners with deep institutional experience and platforms that are secure, compliant, and scalable at the national level. When you combine national vision, regulatory leadership, institutional drive, and mature technology, the conditions are right — and that’s why this use case is progressing at such scale.
In practical terms, how does property tokenisation change liquidity, investor access, and risk dynamics compared to traditional real estate markets?
The impact is fundamental across all three areas.
Liquidity: Real estate is traditionally illiquid. Tokenisation transforms that by enabling fractional ownership and easier trading. That shift from illiquid to more liquid markets has enormous implications for capital flow.
Investor access: Fractionalisation allows both international and local investors to participate at smaller ticket sizes. People can own a share of properties they would never previously have accessed. This broadens participation and drives further liquidity.
Risk dynamics: Transactions become safer, faster, and more secure. That improves underwriting for banks, as settlement becomes more reliable and transparent. In addition, blockchain-based systems create strong audit trails for regulators and auditors. Across transactions, financing, and oversight, risk management improves significantly.
How is the platform engineered to ensure interoperability, cybersecurity resilience, and trust while integrating registries, payments, identity systems, and smart contracts?
At a high level, the platform is deployed within the national environment and integrated directly into the real estate registry infrastructure. That means it is subject to the same cybersecurity controls, protocols, and governance frameworks as other critical national systems. This is not an external or loosely connected platform — it sits within the sovereign environment. That design ensures control, protection, and trust. The system architecture is built to integrate with existing registries and national infrastructure while maintaining the security, compliance, and resilience required at the government level.
Why have many global tokenisation initiatives remained pilots, and what made Saudi Arabia’s rollout possible at full production scale?
Many global initiatives remained pilots because the ecosystem elements weren’t all in place at the same time — regulation, market infrastructure, leadership, and scalable technology. In Saudi Arabia, those “stars” have aligned. Beyond tokenising assets, we are also enabling marketplaces and open integration through APIs. This creates actual venues where trading and transactions can occur, which is what moves a system from pilot to production. Importantly, in the RER sandbox today, four local Saudi PropTech firms are already integrated with the blockchain-based settlement platform and conducting fully tokenised real estate transactions. That operational activity is what defines production readiness, not just technology deployment.
How do you expect banks, PropTech firms, and capital market players to build new financial products on top of the upcoming marketplace and open API ecosystem?
The first wave will come from PropTech firms building their own marketplaces using data and infrastructure accessed through APIs. Once that ecosystem is active, we’ll see a wide range of financial and service innovations. Banks can develop new financing models, capital markets players can structure new asset-backed products, and service providers can build analytics, risk, and compliance tools on top of this infrastructure. At the national scale, tokenisation becomes a base layer — and once that layer exists, innovation above it accelerates in ways that are difficult to fully predict today.
From a governance perspective, where does monitoring and accountability sit — in the physical real estate domain or the digital domain? Ultimately, the underlying assets are still real estate. So the primary regulatory oversight remains with the real estate authority — in Saudi Arabia, that’s the Real Estate General Authority, and in Dubai, it would be the Dubai Land Department. Technology is the enabler, but governance and accountability are anchored in the asset class. The regulators are deeply involved in shaping the framework, supporting the ecosystem, and ensuring that digital infrastructure aligns with legal and institutional structures.
