In July this year, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced its commitment to a plan that will enable the settlement of DLT transactions using central bank money. The bank unveiled more progress updates at Sibos 2025 in the session titled “Tokenised central bank money settled on DLT”. Deputy director general Dimitri Pattyn and the head of ECB’s Market innovation and Integration Division, Holger Neuhaus, took the stage to flesh out the Eurosystem’s dual-track strategy.
The announcement in July brought to public knowledge Pontes, the short-term track, and Appia, the long-term track. The former will offer a Eurosystem DLT-based solution that pilots a link between DLT platforms and TARGET services by end 2026. The latter focuses on a long-term approach for an integrated ecosystem in Europe that can also facilitate operations at the global level.
Not a drill
Speaking to the audience at Sibos, Pattyn was eager to clarify ECB’s commitment to Pontes and the terminology used to describe it: “Our focus is on delivering the product in Q3 next year. We call it a pilot because we are conscious that with the time we have, our product will need further improvements.” Pontes is here to stay and is not temporary, he emphasised.
Building on the ECB wholesale DLT settlement trials conducted in 2024, Pontes will use three trial solutions from the French, German, and Italian central banks. Germany’s Trigger solution and France’s wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) both connect to the TARGET2 payment system and will be Pontes’ two central bank money options. To link to other DLT networks, the German and French solutions will use the Hashlink interoperability solution provided by Italy.
Getting started
A paper will be published in Q1 next year – before the delivery of the Pontes pilot in Q3 – which will include consultation with the industry to steer the project “at least for the rest of 2026”. Delivery for the full solution is set for Q1 2028.
Pattyn is keen to get the ball rolling. “I believe it is not helpful to be thinkers – thinking for three years about something… My hope is that the building blocks from the thinking work will very quickly move to the implementation phase.”
Sibos 2025 plays out in Frankfurt from 29 September to 2 October, with about 12,000 registered delegates. We are there, overview our coverage here.
