SMX and Partners Push Gold Compliance Out of the Back Office and Into the Supply Chain

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / December 22, 2025 / For much of its history, compliance in the gold industry lived at the end of the process. Gold was sourced, refined, and traded first. Documentation followed. Audits came later. Trust was assumed unless challenged.

That model is no longer holding.

Across global gold markets, regulatory expectations have moved upstream. Responsible sourcing, AML, and ESG frameworks now demand proof that originates at the point of extraction and persists through every handoff. Compliance is no longer something that can be reconstructed after the fact. It must be engineered directly into operations.

SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) is serving that reality. More importantly, delivering it.

Deals on Top of Deals to Create a New Gold Standard

Following its engagement with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, SMX has moved quickly to deploy its physical-to-digital authentication framework inside live supply chains through initiatives with Bougainville Refinery Ltd and digital identity provider FinGo. In parallel, the company continues to advance its majority-owned trueGold platform, designed to preserve identity, provenance, and compliance through refining and trade.

The common thread is clear. SMX is treating compliance not as a reporting obligation, but as operational infrastructure. The very thing that global industries are no longer just asking for, but increasingly required to implement.

Traditional compliance systems struggle because they sit downstream from risk. Paper documentation can be altered. Digital records can reflect assumptions rather than facts. By the time discrepancies surface, material has already moved, been aggregated, or entered the market.

SMX addresses this failure at the material level. Its molecular authentication technology embeds an invisible, persistent identity directly into gold itself. That identity survives refinement and downstream processing, enabling verification at multiple operational checkpoints without reliance on reconciliation or manual intervention. With SMX, compliance becomes continuous rather than episodic.

Why SMX Has Become So Relevant

Gold's highest-risk moments occur during handoffs. Aggregation points. Refinery intake. Export authorization. These are operational events, not accounting exercises. Systems that activate only during audits arrive too late.

trueGold extends this approach by framing verified gold as an operationally compliant asset rather than a post-hoc certified one. Gold that carries persistent identity and auditable history is easier to finance, easier to clear, and easier to accept across jurisdictions tightening their sourcing standards.

The human dimension of compliance is equally critical. Many of gold's failures stem not from material substitution, but from unverifiable actors. Shared credentials. Informal identification. Gaps between who is recorded and who actually handled the gold.

FinGo's biometric digital identity infrastructure closes that gap. By enabling verified attribution of actions and custody changes to real individuals aligned with KYC and AML expectations, FinGo allows compliance to operate where it breaks down, at the human interface. This is especially relevant in remote and infrastructure-limited environments, where traditional identity systems are unreliable or absent.

When combined, SMX and FinGo shift compliance from policy to practice. Each custody event links a verified human to a verified asset at a specific moment. Records no longer describe what should have happened. They document what did happen.

Bougainville Refinery Ltd provides the operational context that makes this shift meaningful. As a licensed refinery and exporter, BRL operates at the convergence point of sourcing, compliance, and international market access. Embedding identity infrastructure into refinery and export workflows demonstrates how compliance can be enforced continuously without slowing trade.

Not an Exercise, a Construction Project

The key point is this. These actions are not theoretical. They represent a model for how jurisdictions and supply-chain operators can modernize compliance without relying on punitive enforcement or retroactive audits. By placing verification where gold is actually handled, compliance becomes a function of operations rather than paperwork.

The broader implication is acceleration. Rather than waiting for regulators to mandate new systems, SMX is deploying infrastructure that anticipates where standards are heading. In markets where counterparties increasingly demand evidence instead of assurances, that positioning matters.

Compliance is no longer a back-office function. It is becoming frontline infrastructure. And the companies building it into the physical reality of gold will shape how trust is enforced in the next phase of global precious metals trade.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

This information contains forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and assumptions regarding future events involving SMX (NASDAQ: SMX), its technologies, its partnership activities, and its development of molecular marking systems for recycled PET and other materials. Forward looking statements are not historical facts. They involve risks, uncertainties, and factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Forward looking statements in this editorial include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the integration of SMX's molecular markers into U.S. recycling markets; the potential for FDA-compliant markers to enable recycled PET to enter food-grade and other regulated applications; the scalability of SMX solutions across diverse global supply chains; anticipated adoption of identity-based verification systems by manufacturers, recyclers, regulators, or brand owners; the potential economic impact of turning recycled plastics into tradeable or monetizable assets; the expected performance of SMX's Plastic Cycle Token or other digital verification instruments; and the belief that molecular-level authentication may influence pricing, compliance, sustainability reporting, or financial strategies used within the plastics sector.

These forward looking statements are also subject to assumptions regarding regulatory developments; market demand for authenticated recycled content; the pace of corporate adoption of traceability technology; global economic conditions; supply chain constraints; evolving environmental policies; and general industry behavior relating to sustainability commitments and recycling mandates. Risks include, but are not limited to, changes in FDA or international regulatory standards; technological challenges in large-scale deployment of molecular markers; competitive innovations from other companies; operational disruptions in recycling or plastics manufacturing; fluctuations in pricing for virgin or recycled plastics; and the broader economic conditions that influence capital investment and industrial activity.

Detailed risk factors are described in SMX's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. These statements speak only as of the date of publication. SMX undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events, changes in circumstances, or new information, except as required by applicable law.

EMAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited