How long can I hold digital gold?

You can hold digital gold for as long as the provider that stores it allows. Digital gold is gold you buy online in small amounts, which the seller keeps in a vault on your behalf. How long that can go on, and what it costs, is set by the provider's terms. Both providers whose gold Koshex sells, SafeGold and MMTC-PAMP, say storage is free for some years and may be charged after that. So the real answer sits in their terms and in what your app shows today.

How long can you hold digital gold?

For as long as the provider's storage terms allow. Those terms belong to the provider, not to a law, so they can differ from one provider to the next and can be changed.

On its own website, SafeGold says storage is free for up to five years. After that it reserves the right to charge a yearly fee of around 0.3–0.4% of your gold balance. MMTC-PAMP says you can store gold free for five years from the date of purchase. It says that period can be extended at its discretion, and any extension is subject to the applicable charges. It publishes no fee figure.

SafeGold's two documents do not say the same thing. Its Terms of Use promise free storage for two years from the date of your order. They add "or for such period as" SafeGold notifies to customers on the platform. Its FAQ says five years. Which one applies to the gold you hold is not something we can settle for you. Check what your app shows, and read the storage terms before you buy.

These are SafeGold's and MMTC-PAMP's own terms, as their websites showed them on 2 October 2026.

Who keeps your gold while you hold it?

The provider buys gold for you and stores it in a vault. A vault here is a secured storage facility, and the firm that runs it is the custodian of your gold.

SafeGold names Brink's, a vault firm, as the company that stores its customers' gold, and says the gold is insured. Each quarter, by SafeGold's account, an independent auditor or trustee matches the custodian's holdings against what customers own. A trustee here is a firm that watches over the vault gold for buyers. MMTC-PAMP's page says the gold sits in insured lockers in a facility the company owns.

On Koshex, SafeGold gold is 24K and 99.5% pure, and the minimum purchase is ₹100. For the full question of who is responsible if something goes wrong, read is digital gold safe.

What happens when the free storage period ends?

Under SafeGold's Terms of Use, a fee is taken out of your gold itself. At the end of each month it deducts a small percentage of your metal balance at the specified rate. So you pay in grams, not rupees.

A small example shows the size of it. SafeGold's FAQ gives the range as 0.3–0.4% a year. On 10 grams, that is 0.03 to 0.04 gram a year. Nandini, 29, has bought ₹1,200 of digital gold every month since early 2024. If she leaves it all untouched until she is 40, each year after any free period would trim her grams by that share. Her holding would still be there, just slightly smaller each year.

The same Terms say three more things.

• If fees stay unpaid, SafeGold may sell some of your metal to recover them.
• It may, at its own discretion, set a maximum storage period.
• If delivery is then required and you give no address, a one-year grace period follows. After that, SafeGold buys the metal at its displayed buy-back price. The money, less storage charges, goes to an account run by the trustee administrator, and you can claim it for three years.

MMTC-PAMP's page says free custody is limited to five years and that any extension is subject to applicable charges. It states no sale rule and no fee figure, so we cannot tell you what it would cost after five years.

What can you do with digital gold you no longer want to hold?

You can sell it, take it as physical gold, or sell it and move the money into a gold fund.

• Sell it. Koshex lets you sell at any time. The steps and timing are in selling digital gold step by step.
• Take delivery. Koshex offers physical delivery. Each provider's own delivery terms are in converting digital gold to physical gold. On their own sites, SafeGold's FAQ says delivery starts at 0.5 gram and MMTC-PAMP's at 1 gram.
• Move to a gold fund. This is a sale of your gold, which may be taxed, followed by a purchase of fund units. Koshex sells gold funds as regular plans, through an app run by an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor. A regular plan is the version of a fund bought through a distributor. A gold fund charges a yearly fee called the expense ratio, which is taken from the fund's value. For a gold fund of funds, which holds a gold ETF, SEBI caps it at 0.90% a year including the ETF's own cost. A gold ETF is a fund listed on the stock exchange, where its units change hands. Under SEBI's rules it keeps at least 95% of its net assets in gold and gold-related instruments. The comparison is in digital gold vs gold mutual funds.

Does holding digital gold longer change the tax?

Yes. A gain on digital gold is long-term only if you sell more than 24 months after buying. It is then taxed at 12.5% under section 197 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. Sold earlier, the gain is short-term and taxed at your slab rate.

Each purchase has its own date, shown on its invoice, and its own 24-month clock. If you buy every month, your older purchases turn long-term first and the newer ones later. How the tax is worked out, and what you can do to reduce it, is in how to save tax on digital gold.

What are the risks of holding digital gold for years?

Your gold depends on the provider for as long as you hold it. Three risks come with holding for years.

Provider risk. Digital gold is not regulated by SEBI. In November 2025 SEBI said such products are "neither notified as securities nor regulated as commodity derivatives" and that its investor-protection mechanisms do not apply to them. Gold ETFs and gold mutual funds are SEBI-regulated. SEBI also said such products may expose investors to counterparty and operational risks. Counterparty risk means the provider on the other side of your purchase fails to do what it promised. Operational risk means something goes wrong in how the business runs.

Storage fees. After the free period, a fee in grams shrinks your holding every year, as the 10-gram example shows.

No income while you wait. Gold itself pays no interest or dividend, so any gain comes only from a change in its price. That price can fall and stay down for years. The price history is covered in the pros and cons of digital gold and in gold in your portfolio.

None of this says you should or should not hold. It says the length of your holding is set partly by terms you should read first. You can see the current options on the digital gold page.