A new peer-to-peer trading facility from Securitize allows retail investors to buy and sell security tokens near instantaneously by simply clicking a web link.

The San Francisco firm – which received SEC approval last year – said Thursday the new "Instant Access" service allows users to directly trade security tokens, in a secure and regulatory compliant way. The system works on the Ethereum mainnet without middlemen adding costs and friction to the process.

Built on Securitize's Digital Securities protocol, the new facility speeds up a cumbersome process, by which security token holders try to sell without making a position on a public exchange. Carlos Domingo, Securitize co-founder and CEO, said Instant Access helped "fulfill one of the core promises of digital securities – simply, compliant, and efficient transferability on a global scale."

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Instant Access was built with the team behind AirSwap, the Ethereum p2p network, which previously helped Securitize facilitate the first U.S. compliant security token transfer in November 2018.

Under the hood, the new offering works in pretty much the same way. As with AirSwap, Instant Access users communicate with one another off-chain. A seller expresses their intent to sell privately to prospective buyers by sharing a web link via text, email, or social media. The buyer then clicks on the link to initiate the transaction.

A Securitize spokesperson told CoinDesk trades can settle pretty much instantaneously, assuming buyers have already completed all the required KYC/AML checks set out by the security token's issuer.

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"The feature enables investors in private securities to quickly and easily create compliant peer-to-peer transactions with no counterparty risk," the spokesperson said. "What has typically been a very burdensome and time-consuming process (trading private securities) can now be completed compliantly in seconds with no fees other than the “gas costs” associated with the Ethereum blockchain."

Securitize said Instant Access is live and available for traders as of Thursday.