The Eurosystem launched Pontes on Monday, its new solution for settling wholesale tokenised asset transactions in central bank money—the first concrete step in a strategy to make central bank money fit for a tokenised future.
An initial cohort of banks and DLT operators, including Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, the European Investment Bank, KfW and Clearstream, has completed onboarding and is ready to transact immediately, with further participants committed to joining in the coming months. The Eurosystem describes this first phase as a “core set of services,” with enhanced features and extended operating hours to be phased in and full implementation targeted for 2028.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is putting the rail to work itself. It confirmed it will invest a small portion of its own funds—the non-monetary policy portfolio that covers OpEx—into tokenised securities, settling the trades through Pontes. The move is intended to give the ECB direct experience as an investor and deepen its institutional grasp of DLT, covering the full investment lifecycle: trade execution, settlement, systems and portfolio management, rather than to generate returns or signal a market view. George Kalogeropoulos, deputy head of the Market Infrastructure Development Division, recently shared it’s vision for the digital money era, and how existing post-trade processes map onto DLT ones.
Initial purchases will be confined to euro-denominated securities issued by euro area central and regional governments, agencies, and European supranational institutions, a conservative starting scope that keeps the pilot within familiar credit and liquidity profiles while the operational mechanics are tested.
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to Europe’s tokenised finance ecosystem, calling it an important advantage to help the sector scale.
The interoperability hinge
Richard Baker, founder and CEO of Tokenovate, said: “While the service will initially operate within existing market hours, the longer-term opportunity is to support more continuous, potentially 24/7, settlement. As adoption grows, that will make interoperability across platforms, custodial networks and existing settlement systems even more important.”
