ECB launches Pontes platform to settle tokenised wholesale assets in central-bank money

The European Central Bank (ECB) went live on Monday with Pontes, a platform that connects distributed-ledger technology (DLT) market infrastructure to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services, allowing eligible financial institutions and market infrastructure providers to settle tokenised-asset transactions in central-bank money. ECB President Christine Lagarde announced the go-live at a Eurogroup meeting on Friday, describing it as a digital euro made available for banks so they can transact among themselves using tokenised assets and DLT.

The practical problem Pontes addresses is well-established: tokenised bonds, funds, and other financial assets require a reliable cash-leg settlement mechanism, and until now European institutions faced a binary choice between stablecoins and tokenised commercial-bank deposits. Pontes offers a third path anchored in sovereign credit, which matters for counterparties that carry central-bank-money settlement as a risk or regulatory preference. The ECB has stated that the platform will be developed in stages alongside its longer-term Appia initiative for wholesale tokenisation, signalling that Pontes is a foundation rather than a finished product.

Pontes is explicitly ring-fenced from the retail digital euro, which remains on a separate track. The ECB selected 36 banks and payment firms in July to participate in a one-year pilot of the retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 across the ECB and 19 euro-area national central banks, covering online and offline person-to-person transfers, in-store payments, and e-commerce. Possible retail issuance is pencilled in for 2029, though enabling legislation is still being debated in the EU parliament. The ECB’s stated motivation for pressing ahead is the perceived threat to European monetary autonomy from dollar-backed stablecoins such as Tether‘s USDT and Circle Internet’s USDC.