The Eurosystem has launched Pontes, a new settlement service that connects market-operated distributed-ledger platforms with TARGET Services so euro-denominated wholesale transactions involving tokenized assets can settle in central bank money.
The European Central Bank announced the launch on Sept. 21, saying an initial group of financial institutions and DLT operators had completed onboarding and could begin using the service immediately. Additional participants are expected to connect in the coming months.
The launch moves Pontes from a planned project into live infrastructure, but the service is not yet in its final form. The ECB said it will begin with a core set of services, add features and extend operating hours gradually, and target full implementation by 2028.
A bridge between DLT platforms and TARGET Services
Pontes is designed as an interoperability layer rather than a replacement for every existing market ledger. The ECB’s project documentation describes a dual settlement model: participants can settle on a Eurosystem DLT platform using cash tokens or through T2, the Eurosystem’s real-time gross settlement system.
For the T2 route, legal finality for the cash leg occurs when the corresponding transaction is completed in T2. Pontes uses the Hash-Link protocol to coordinate delivery-versus-payment and other transactions that require all legs either to complete together or not complete at all. The ECB says the design supports automated end-to-end processing and interaction with T2.
That architecture addresses a central problem in institutional tokenization. A tokenized security may be issued and transferred on a distributed ledger, but the cash leg still needs a trusted settlement asset and a reliable way to synchronize with the asset transfer. Pontes gives eligible platforms a route to central bank money without requiring the parties to rely on a privately issued stablecoin as the settlement asset.
This does not mean Pontes is a retail central bank digital currency or a public crypto network. It is wholesale financial-market infrastructure for regulated participants, and the first release still relies in part on T2. The ECB also has not described the initial service as fully implemented or continuously available around the clock.
Banks and market operators are already onboarded
The ECB named an initial group that includes Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, the European Investment Bank, KfW and several other banks and public-sector financial institutions. Clearstream, Cashlink, SWIAT and Axiology are among the onboarded DLT operators. The Deutsche Bundesbank has also onboarded in a market-participant capacity.
Eligibility is broader than that first group but remains institutional. The ECB says market participants must have access to T2 under the TARGET framework. Eligible DLT operators can include authorized central securities depositories, operators approved under the EU DLT Pilot Regime, overseen payment-system operators, authorized central counterparties and certain regulated financial institutions that meet the Eurosystem’s conditions.
Pontes follows the Eurosystem’s 2024 exploratory work, conducted with 64 market participants across more than 50 trials and experiments. According to the ECB, participants in that program identified access to a risk-free settlement asset as important for wider use of DLT in wholesale markets.
What the launch means for payments and tokenization firms
For banks, tokenization platforms and securities infrastructure providers, the immediate development is access rather than wholesale market transformation. Pontes creates a production route for connecting tokenized transactions to central bank settlement, but adoption will depend on participant onboarding, asset eligibility, operating hours, integration costs and whether transaction flows move beyond pilots and isolated issuances.
The design also sharpens the distinction between tokenized assets and private digital money. Stablecoins and tokenized deposits may still serve other payment and liquidity use cases, but Pontes gives eligible wholesale-market participants a public-sector settlement option anchored in central bank money. The practical question is therefore not whether every tokenized transaction must use one form of digital cash, but which settlement asset and infrastructure fit the regulatory, liquidity and finality requirements of a particular market.
The Eurosystem is pursuing a second track called Appia alongside Pontes. Appia is intended to explore a longer-term, integrated ecosystem for DLT-based financial services, with a blueprint planned for 2028. Pontes is the near-term service; Appia remains an exploratory program rather than an operating replacement for Europe’s current market infrastructure.
The launch gives the European tokenized-finance market a live bridge to central bank money. Its significance will ultimately be measured by production volumes, broader participation and operational performance as the Eurosystem expands the service through 2028—metrics the ECB did not disclose in the launch announcement.