How to Buy Digital Gold in India: 2025 Guide to Investing in Gold Online

What Is Digital Gold?

Digital gold is a way to buy and hold gold entirely through an online platform instead of in the form of physical coins, bars, or jewellery. You pay in rupees, and the platform credits you with a certain number of grams of 24K gold. Behind the scenes, the provider typically claims to store the equivalent quantity of physical gold with a bullion and vault partner. You can later sell your holdings back to the platform for cash or, on some platforms, redeem them as coins or bars.

In India, you will usually find digital gold being offered through payment apps, fintech investment apps, some bank or NBFC apps, and jewellers’ websites. You do not need a demat account or a trading account; in that sense, digital gold feels very different from a gold ETF or a futures contract.

Three things make digital gold investment particularly attractive:

• The minimum ticket size is tiny, sometimes as low as ₹10 or even a fraction of a gram, which helps first-time investors start small.
  
  

• You do not have to worry about arranging a locker, insuring jewellery, or physically checking purity and weight.
  
  

• The whole experience looks similar to any other online gold investment or wallet transaction you already make on UPI or a familiar app.
  
  

For many people, that combination makes digital gold feel like a simple way to start building gold exposure alongside or instead of traditional gold investment in jewellery.

Is Digital Gold Regulated and Safe?

This is the part most marketing pages gloss over, but it is exactly where SEBI has focused its attention.

On 8 November 2025, SEBI published an official press release titled ‘Caution to the public regarding dealing in ‘Digital Gold’’. In that document and in subsequent explanations, SEBI made three essential points:

1. Typical digital gold or e-gold products sold on apps and websites are not notified as securities under securities law.
   
   

2. They are not classified as commodity derivatives under SEBI’s commodity regulations.
   
   

3. As a result, SEBI does not regulate these products or the platforms that offer them, and they do not carry the usual securities-market protections.
   
   

Later in November 2025, SEBI’s chairperson clarified in an interview that there are no new regulations for digital gold in the works as of now. Instead, SEBI is concentrating on strengthening already regulated products such as gold ETFs, silver ETFs and gold-linked passive funds.

This has two implications for anyone considering digital gold investment:

• You rely heavily on the integrity and solvency of the specific platform and its bullion partner. If something goes wrong at that level, there is no specialised SEBI regime to fall back on.
  
  

• You should not assume that digital gold enjoys the same regulatory status as SGBs, gold ETFs, or other regulated gold investment products.
  
  

Digital gold may still have a role, but it should be viewed as an unregulated, platform-dependent product, not as a drop-in replacement for regulated investments.

How to Buy Digital Gold in India?

Even with the regulatory caveat, many people still want to know how to buy digital gold in India because it fits a very specific purpose, such as slowly saving towards future jewellery. The mechanical process is quite straightforward.

The first step is to choose a platform. In practice, this often means picking between a payment app you already use, a dedicated investment app, or an online platform run by a jeweller or financial services company. Instead of focusing only on cashbacks or festive offers, it is wiser to read the platform’s digital gold section carefully: Look for who the bullion provider is, which vault company stores the gold, and what the terms say about purity, insurance, audit, and redemption.

Next, you open an account or log into your existing profile. Most providers will allow you to view prices or even make very small test purchases with minimal formalities, but to invest meaningful sums or to redeem, you will normally need to complete KYC. That usually means providing your PAN, Aadhaar and possibly bank details, similar to what you would do for other financial services, even though this product itself is not a SEBI-regulated security.

Once your account is ready, you decide how much digital gold to buy. Platforms typically offer two modes. One is to specify a rupee amount — For example, ‘Buy ₹1,000 of gold’— and the app will convert that amount to grams at the current rate. The other is to specify a weight, such as ‘Buy 1 gram’, and pay whatever rupee amount corresponds. For someone new to digital gold investment, it often makes sense to start with a small amount simply to understand how the platform behaves when prices move, and how easy it is to sell or redeem.

You then pay using UPI, net banking, a card or wallet balance. The platform will usually show you a live gold price, lock that rate for a few seconds while you confirm, and then update your balance in grams in your digital gold ‘wallet’. From that moment, your gold investment online exists as a number in the platform’s records rather than as a coin in your hand.

Finally, you decide what to do with it. Some people let their digital gold accumulate for a while and then sell it back to the platform when they need the money. Others eventually convert part of it into physical coins or bars, paying the necessary delivery and making charges. The key is to treat that decision like any other financial move: Check the spread between buy and sell prices, factor in charges, and think about whether a regulated instrument might be more suitable if your goal is long-term wealth rather than short-term convenience.

What Does Digital Gold Really Cost?

Because the minimum investment is so small, it is easy to assume digital gold is a cheap way to invest. In reality, there are several layers of cost, most of which are embedded in the pricing rather than shown as separate line items.

The first layer is the spread between the platform’s buy price and its sell price. If you buy at ₹X per gram and the platform will only buy back at ₹Y per gram, the difference immediately represents a percentage of your capital that disappears as soon as you transact. The wider this spread, the more your effective return is dragged down, especially if you buy and sell frequently. Many commentaries on digital gold in India highlight that spreads and mark-ups can be meaningful and vary from platform to platform.

The second layer is storage and insurance, which are often marketed as ‘free’. In practice, the cost of secure storage and insurance is built into the price you pay. Some platforms even specify a time period for free storage and reserve the right to convert or sell holdings that are inactive for a long period, so it is worth reading that part of the terms.

The third layer arises when you redeem digital gold as physical gold. If you ask for delivery of coins, bars or jewellery, you usually pay delivery charges, and you may also pay making charges depending on the form you choose. For someone whose main objective is to maximize the long-term value of their digital gold investment, these redemption costs can reduce overall returns in a way that is not obvious when you are only looking at the app’s live price.

On top of this, you still need to think about taxation. The rules for taxing profits from gold can be different from the rules for other assets and may change over time. Sovereign Gold Bonds, for instance, combine gold price exposure with a fixed interest rate and have their own tax features; RBI’s FAQs and investor-education sites emphasise the 2.5% annual interest and how it is credited every six months. It is always safer to check up-to-date rules or consult a tax professional instead of assuming that digital gold will be taxed in exactly the same manner as another form of gold investment.

Digital Gold vs Other Gold Investment Options

Digital gold does not exist in a vacuum. To decide whether it suits you, it helps to compare it with a few major alternatives.

Digital Gold vs Physical Gold

Physical gold — coins, bars, jewellery — is deeply embedded in Indian culture. When you buy jewellery, you are often buying emotion as much as metal. Physical gold lets you hold your wealth in your hands and is not tied to the survival of any app or website.

But physical gold has clear downsides as a pure gold investment. You pay making charges on jewellery. You must arrange safekeeping, either in a locker or at home. You might face discounts or negotiation on purity and price when you try to sell. Digital gold removes many of these frictions by leaving storage, purity, and liquidity to the platform, but you exchange those issues for trust in a specific unregulated provider.

Digital Gold vs Gold ETFs and Gold Mutual Funds

Gold ETFs and gold-oriented mutual funds sit at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of regulation. These funds are registered with SEBI and must follow mutual fund regulations, disclosure rules, and valuation norms. In mid-2025, for example, SEBI released a consultation paper specifically on standardising how gold and silver ETFs value the physical metal they hold, with the stated aim of making pricing more transparent and consistent for investors.

Investor behaviour has increasingly reflected that confidence. Data from late 2025 show that gold and silver ETFs have attracted a large share of passive fund inflows in India, and assets under management in gold ETFs have reached record highs of around $10 billion as investors look for safer, regulated exposure to gold rather than only jewellery or unregulated products.

Compared with digital gold, a gold ETF or a gold mutual fund:

• Is overseen under SEBI rules.
  
  

• Sits in your demat or mutual fund account rather than only on an app ledger.
  
  

• Has a clearly defined structure, valuation process, and legal framework.
  
  

For many investors who want gold investment online in a regulated format, ETFs and gold funds are often more suitable than unregulated digital gold, especially for larger or long-term allocations.

Digital Gold vs Sovereign Gold Bonds

SGBs are another powerful alternative. Issued by the Government of India and handled by RBI and authorised intermediaries, these bonds give you exposure to the market price of gold and pay a fixed interest of 2.5% per year on the initial amount you invest. That interest is credited every six months to your bank account and the final interest payment comes at maturity along with the principal. 

Because SGBs are backed by the sovereign and have clearly defined terms, they are usually seen as a long-term gold investment product rather than a trading tool. They do come with an eight-year maturity and only certain windows for early exit, so they are not as flexible as digital gold, but they offer a combination of regulatory comfort, interest income, and potential tax advantages that digital gold simply does not.

Digital Gold vs Trading Gold Prices on TMGM

Finally, it is important to distinguish digital gold investment from trading gold using derivatives such as Contracts for Difference (CFDs), which is what platforms like TMGM primarily offer.

When you trade a gold CFD, you do not own any gold, physical or digital. Instead, you enter into a contract where your profit or loss is based on how the gold price moves between the time you open and close your position. You can use leverage, which means a relatively small amount of capital controls a larger notional exposure. That can magnify gains but also magnifies losses and can result in losing your entire trading capital very quickly if the market moves against you.

This approach is closer to active speculation than to traditional gold investment online. It might be relevant for experienced traders who follow gold markets closely and have a strict risk-management plan.

Where Can Digital Gold Fit in a Portfolio?

Once you understand the differences between these products, you can start thinking about how they might be layered rather than treated as either/or choices.

Many investors choose to build a core gold allocation using regulated products: SGBs for long-term holding and interest income, gold ETFs or gold mutual funds for flexible, demat-based exposure, and possibly electronic gold receipts (EGRs) for those who want a more trading-oriented but still regulated structure. These sit under SEBI or RBI rules and are designed with investor protection in mind. 

Some advanced traders then add a separate, small tactical layer using futures or gold CFDs, accepting that this is high risk and should be treated like trading, not like long-term investment.

Digital gold, in this framework, becomes an optional convenience layer. It may make sense for:

• Very small, regular savings amounts where opening a demat or buying SGBs feels like overkill.
  
  

• Short-term goals such as accumulating a specific quantity of gold for future jewellery purchases.
  
  

But given the explicit SEBI caution that digital gold and e-gold products are unregulated and involve counterparty and operational risks, many experts would argue that it is unwise to make digital gold the core of your lifetime gold investment plan.

Common Pitfalls When Using Gold Investment Online

Because digital gold and other forms of gold investment online are so easy to access, investors often fall into similar traps.

One common mistake is treating promotional cashbacks or discounts as a sign that a digital gold platform is cheap or safe. A one-time ₹50 coupon does not compensate for a wide spread, opaque pricing, or weak legal protection if something goes wrong. Safety in digital gold investment depends much more on who the underlying partners are, how the gold is stored, and how robust the platform’s processes are.

Another mistake is ignoring SEBI’s explicit warning. The regulator has gone out of its way to state that digital gold is not a security, not a regulated derivative, and not under its supervision, and that investors can be exposed to significant operational and counterparty risks on unregulated platforms. Brushing that aside and treating digital gold as “just another investment” is risky.

A third error is using digital gold to hold large, long-term family wealth without considering regulated alternatives. For long-horizon goals like retirement or children’s education, SGBs and gold ETFs usually offer a stronger combination of structure, oversight and, in the case of SGBs, interest income, than an unregulated vault-based product.

Investors also sometimes fail to read redemption and storage conditions. If a platform only offers free storage for a limited time or insists on a minimum quantity for delivery, your plans for gradually redeeming small amounts of digital gold as coins may not work as smoothly as you imagined.

Finally, people often forget about the tax side. Selling digital gold at a profit can create tax obligations just like other investments, and assuming it will be treated casually because it ‘lives in an app’ can lead to unpleasant surprises later.