The European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing to launch the long-anticipated “Pontes” ecosystem with qualified distributed ledger technology-enhanced platforms that provide services, including tokenization, to the European wholesale market.
The ECB’s Governing Council approved Pontes in 2025, which takes a two-track approach: the first track, “Pontes,” provides a short-term offering to the market, including a pilot phase, while the second track, “Appia,” focuses on a long-term solution.
The goal is to support market demands, ensure the role of central bank money, adhere to the EU’s “strategic autonomy,” and boost a nascent digital capital markets union, including a savings and investments union in Europe.
Participants can settle transactions on the Eurosystem DLT platform with cash tokens, or in T2, the Eurosystem’s real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system.
The go-live date is scheduled for 21 September 2026.
The “evolving list” of operators was revealed, with more in the queue as they complete registration. These are
- Clearstream (DE)
- SWIAT (DE)
- Cashlink (DE)
- Axiology (LT)
Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, speaking today at the Deutsche Bundesbank’s Symposium on “Future of payments: trends and innovations in Germany and Europe” declared that “Tokenized assets will be at the center of a new digital finance ecosystem that allows issuers, investors and intermediaries to think anew and innovate.”
He envisions a system with central bank money at its core, simplifying the architecture of finance. Cipollone believes that tokenization will “reorganize the entire financial value chain.”
The risks to tokenization include fragmentation, “loss of the monetary anchor,” and external dependence.
Cipollone said Pontes is making tokenized transactions in central bank money a reality, and Appia is supporting the public-private roadmap.
“Two years ago, I argued that Europe had a unique opportunity to build an integrated capital market for digital assets from the outset. Today, we are delivering on that vision.”