New data from The Royal Mint shows an increase in its sales of platinum during the first quarter of 2025, with the total weight of platinum sold via its website up 53% compared to the same quarter last year. The total volume of platinum sold via The Royal Mint’s digital platinum product, DigiPlatinum, rose 133% year-on-year during the first quarter of 2025, while the total number of customers buying platinum on its website also increased, rising 23%.
The Royal Mint, which is wholly owned by His Majesty’s Treasury, the UK government’s economic and finance ministry, has a long and illustrious history, having worked with precious metals for over 1,100 years. Yet it is an organisation that has a track record for innovation, offering collectors and investors a wide range of products at varying price points, with a focus on making investing in precious metals as accessible as possible.
Over a decade ago, The Royal Mint began selling investment grade bullion directly to the public at prices linked to the live metal spot price via a 24/7 online trading platform. The motivation was to provide a means of overcoming factors that were deterring investors at the time, including the difficulty of both finding a trusted dealer and arranging storage.
In 2015, The Royal Mint went a step further, launching its initial digital precious metals offering, enabling investors the flexibility of owning fractions of larger bullion bars at its lowest premiums. Since then, it has expanded to offer digital platinum, gold and silver products through a platform that can be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a week from anywhere in the world. Today, digital platinum investment sits alongside The Royal Mint’s range of platinum bullion coins and bars, including the iconic Britannia and The Royal Tudor Beasts series.
Fractional ownership
An investment in digital platinum differs from investing in bullion bars and coins in as much as it allows the ownership of a fractional amount of platinum based on value rather than weight. The current minimum level of investment is £25.
Once an investment is made, the investor has legal title to the platinum purchased, with The Royal Mint acting as custodian only.
While all of the digital platinum owned is physically-backed by actual, investment-grade large platinum bullion bars, which are stored in The Royal Mint’s secure vault, the amount of platinum owned by an investor cannot be delivered. The savings achieved due to economies of scale are passed on to investors through minimised premiums and storage fees. Investment in digital platinum, unlike bars and coins, is VAT-exempt.
Commenting on The Royal Mint’s digital platinum investment platform, Andrew Dickey, Divisional Director, Precious Metals, said:
“The benefits of investing in gold, silver and platinum are well known, but so are the challenges: namely security and storage. Digital investment offers a convenient and relatively low-cost alternative to owning physical precious metals. Backed by the reputation of our bullion bars, a store of wealth trusted by banks and intermediaries all over the world, we’ve designed a secure digital platform that makes investing in precious metals easier than ever before.”
