Bank Mellat, Saman and Saderat Enter Final Stages of Connection to the Gold Platform Supervisory System; Iran Starts Breaking the Online Gold Vault Monopoly (Saturday, 1 August 2026)

If you have ever bought gold on your phone, the experience was probably this: you entered an amount, tapped a button, and a number appeared on the screen telling you how many grams (or sut, thousandths of a gram) of gold you now own. But where is that gold? Who is holding it? A report published on Saturday, 10 Mordad 1405 (1 August 2026) changes part of the answer: the operation to connect three banks, Mellat, Saman and Saderat, to the gold platform supervisory system has entered its final stages.

According to the IRNA news agency, republished the same day by Eghtesad Online and Hamshahri Online, the connection is being carried out under the Article 18 working group on gold and silver platform rules, which sits under the central headquarters for combating goods and currency smuggling. Once initial testing is complete, the three banks will begin contracting with online gold and silver trading platforms. The stated result comes down to one word: removing the monopoly over gold platform vaulting. The same report, however, carries an explicit caveat that should not be dropped: given the sensitivity of the matter, the executive steps will take time.

Background

This did not come out of nowhere. Its legal track is cabinet decree number 134107/T64037H of 14/8/1404 (5 November 2025), which recognised online gold and silver trading and called for an executive framework. On that same track, on 25 Khordad 1405 (15 June 2026), and by its own account at the request of market participants, the Central Bank of Iran approved and issued the "rules governing the vaulting of gold and silver bullion by legal entities approved by the central bank, for online gold and silver trading platforms".

The most important clause of that circular decides who is even allowed to be a vault: a credit institution holding final security and law-enforcement clearance from the FARAJA police (within the framework of related approvals, including the directive on protection requirements for bank and credit institution safe-deposit vaults, approved by the Supreme National Security Council on 25/05/1401, i.e. 16 August 2022) may operate as a vault once the central bank approves it, and the list of central-bank-approved vaults is publicly announced. The 1 August report is, in effect, that circular reaching the banks.

The anatomy of an online gold purchase: platform, vault, supervisory system

To see why this matters, the three links of the chain have to be separated. This separation is the heart of the story:

• The platform: the app or website where you place the order. The platform does not necessarily hold gold itself; its core role is to intermediate the trade.
• The vault: where the bullion backing those orders is physically held. This is the critical link. When you buy two grams of gold, two real grams have to exist somewhere. Under the issued rules, a vault only takes in standard gold and silver bullion, and assaying and insurance processes are provided for in the same rules.
• The supervisory system: the system that reconciles vault holdings against registered orders. The rule text explicitly provides for "creating and changing the sale capacity of platforms in the sales systems", meaning a platform's selling ceiling is meant to be tied to real vault holdings rather than to the platform's own word.

Physical delivery is defined inside the same chain: under the rules, platforms may work with central-bank-approved vaults for the delivery of standard bullion, and gold is delivered to platform customers through the vault.

The numbers and the dates

This structural change is happening in a market whose prices are anything but calm. On Sahmino's price feed at 16:39 on Saturday, 1 August 2026, a gram of 18 karat gold stood at 18,845,300 tomans, up 0.96% on the day; the Emami coin stood at 188,510,000 tomans, up 0.27%; and the Emami coin premium stood at 3,584,000 tomans, up 9.33% in a single day. For scale, the net asset value of Iran's exchange traded gold funds had passed 670 trillion tomans in the week ending 26 Tir 1405 (17 July 2026). The more money that flows through these routes, the more expensive the question "where is my gold" becomes. Live levels sit on the Sahmino price pages.

The drivers

Why was vault concentration a problem at all? Three reasons, without exaggeration:

• Concentration risk: when the physical backing sits with a very small number of institutions, any disruption at one of them can stall the whole route.
• No competition: a monopoly vault has little incentive to lower custody costs, and that cost eventually lands somewhere in the platform's fee.
• A capacity ceiling: market growth stays bounded by one institution's physical capacity, and vault capacity effectively sets a platform's selling ceiling.

And why do banks matter here? The mechanism is simple: banks already have physical custody infrastructure, safe-deposit operations, insurance and audit, and they are themselves supervised by the central bank. So this is not merely "one more player", it is an extra layer of supervision. The honest caveat sits in the same place: under the rule text, vaulting remains restricted to approved credit institutions, and the door was not opened to independent private companies. That means more vaults, not a free market in vaulting.

What changes for an ordinary buyer, and what does not

What changes: the backing behind your purchase can be held at more than one vault, at institutions whose list is publicly announced and whose licensing has two layers (FARAJA and the central bank). What does not change matters more: breaking the vault monopoly does not remove gold price risk, does not zero out platform fees, and by itself does not guarantee that holdings fully reconcile with orders. That reconciliation is the supervisory system's job, and its effect has to be judged in practice.

For the mechanics of that third column, Gold Funds: How They Work, What They Cost, and Why the Board Price Drifts From NAV walks the same route; and for how the coin premium referred to above is actually calculated, this piece on the Emami coin premium sets out the arithmetic.

Outlook

This section is an estimate, not news. The road ahead has three bottlenecks: initial connection testing, the banks signing contracts with platforms, and public publication of the list of approved vaults. Until all three are done, "removing the monopoly" is a process under way and not a settled state. The 1 August report says exactly that: it will take time. Experience with other market infrastructure projects suggests the distance between "final stages" and "working for the user" is rarely short.

The verdict

The verdict today is clear: Saturday, 1 August 2026 delivered an execution step, not a closed file. Three banks are in the final stages of connecting to the supervisory system, which means that from here the gold backing online platforms can sit in several licensed vaults under one holdings-reconciliation system. The one thing to remember: transparency in this market is a process, not an announcement, and there is only one yardstick for it, the public publication of the central bank's list of approved vaults.

What to watch

Three signals, for observation only and with no recommendation attached: first, publication of the public list of central-bank-approved vaults; second, announcement of contracts between these three banks and the platforms once testing ends; third, any change in the platforms' stated sale capacity, because that is precisely where vault holdings show up inside the product. The daily picture of the gold and coin market is tracked in Saturday's Iran Market Pulse.