The Eurosystem switched on Pontes this morning. Banks can now settle wholesale tokenised asset trades in central bank money, with the euro side tied back to TARGET rather than to a private token or a correspondent account.
Christine Lagarde called it progress toward a more integrated European market. Piero Cipollone, the Italian economist on the ECB Executive Board who chairs the Eurosystem’s digital euro task force, was more precise. Pontes, he said, brings the stability and trust of central bank money into Europe’s tokenised finance ecosystem. The ECB’s own phrasing is simpler: digital euro made available for banks.
Pontes connects privately run distributed ledgers to TARGET services. A market participant can buy a tokenised instrument on a commercial platform and pay for it in central bank money. Finality sits in T2, or in tokenised central bank money on the Eurosystem’s own ledger, depending on the model. The official release is clear that this is the first operational step in a longer programme. The first session runs on TARGET business hours, about 09:00 to 16:00 CET. The ECB plans to extend that to roughly 22.5 hours a day in 2027 and to 24/7 operation by mid-2028, with extra features added in the same steps.
The euro side was the blockage
Tokenised bonds and funds have not failed for lack of issuance experiments. They have stalled where the euros still sit in commercial bank money, with the usual credit, timing and reconciliation risk. Counterparties told the ECB as much in the 2024 trials. Access to a risk-free settlement asset was the condition for scale.
Pontes meets that test, but only for a short euro session and the names already onboarded. Delivery versus payment can now be synchronised across a market ledger and TARGET. It matters for tokenised government paper, agency debt and intra-European collateral mobility. It also sits next to the Eurosystem’s earlier decision to accept DLT-based assets as eligible collateral from March 2026, provided they still meet the usual eligibility tests.
An initial group has completed onboarding. On the bank side that includes Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, Deka Bank, DZ Bank, BayernLB, the European Investment Bank, and KfW. The first DLT operators include Clearstream, Cashlink, SWIAT and Axiology. Deutsche Bundesbank is onboarded as a market participant.
Fees start as one-off onboarding charges, not per-trade tariffs. The ECB also said it will put a small slice of its own funds into tokenised euro public-sector paper and settle those purchases through Pontes.
What Pontes is not
It is not the household digital euro. Retail testing is still pencilled for mid-2027. A public product sits later, and still needs legislation. Private euro tokens are a separate track. Qivalis is the bank consortium building a regulated euro stablecoin. Pontes is public money under a wholesale trade.
It is also not a substitute for Appia. Appia is the longer design exercise, due to produce a blueprint for a tokenised European market by 2028. Pontes is the service that exists today: a short session, euro only, a small first group, and legal finality that still sits in T2.
Private tokens have been standing in for the euro side where correspondent rails are closed. Frankfurt has now put central bank money under the trade instead. The service is live. The hours, the law and the first tickets will decide whether banks treat it as settlement they can book.
Author: Andy Samu
See Also:
Euro Stablecoins and FX on the Main Stage at EBC12 | Disruption Banking
How Qivalis is Raising the Stakes for a Digital Euro | Disruption Banking
