A demat (dematerialized) account allows you to hold financial securities like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and gold in electronic format rather than physical certificates. To buy gold, you need to have a demat account.
You can open a demat account with brokers like Zerodha, Upstox, ICICI Direct etc. You need to fill up an account opening form either online or offline along with KYC documents like PAN card, Aadhar card etc.
Once your demat account is opened, you need to link it to your savings bank account to transfer funds for buying gold. You also need to link the account to your PAN card.
Leading stock brokers like Zerodha allow you to buy digital gold on their platforms which gets credited to your demat account. This is the easiest way to buy paperless gold using a demat account.
You can buy gold ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) using your demat account. Gold ETFs invest in physical gold and each unit represents 1 gram of gold. You need to have demat account to hold the units when you buy or sell Gold ETFs.
Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) are also available in demat format. You can hold SGBs in demat format instead of paper certificate. To do this, you need to have a demat account with any broker.
To buy digital gold or gold ETFs/SGBs, place order on broker platform, make payment from linked bank account. The holdings will reflect in your demat account.