ECB Pontes and Appia

A tokenized bond can change hands on a DLT platform in seconds, but the payment for it has to move as well. Banks settle large euro payments among themselves in central bank money in T2, the Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system. Without a link between the ledger and T2, a DLT platform has two choices: a cash token issued by a private firm, such as an e-money token, or a cash leg settled outside the ledger, with the timing risk that comes with it.

The Eurosystem tested this link in 2024. Between May and November of that year, 64 market participants ran more than fifty trials and experiments with three central bank solutions: the Bundesbank's Trigger, Banca d'Italia's TIPS Hash-Link and Banque de France's DL3S. The page on wholesale CBDC describes the three and how the exploratory work led to Pontes.

According to the ECB's description of Pontes, the service consolidates the three interoperability solutions explored before. Its settlement model is dual: participants settle either with cash tokens on the Eurosystem DLT platform or directly in T2, and the cash leg becomes final once the matching transaction is completed in T2. An interoperability mechanism based on the Hash-Link protocol ties the ledger and T2 together, so that delivery versus payment and other all-or-none transactions settle completely or not at all.

The ECB Governing Council approved the agreement for the initial launch on August 11, 2026, with terms and conditions for market participants and for operators of market DLT platforms. The ECB's record of its decisions calls it a binding legal framework for a production-grade system that also reflects the interim nature of this phase. Further features are to follow step by step.

Any entity with access to T2 can take part as a participant. Operators of market DLT platforms that can connect include central securities depositories authorized under the CSD Regulation, operators of a DLT settlement system or a DLT trading and settlement system under the DLT Pilot Regime, overseen payment systems in the EU or the EEA, central counterparties authorized under EMIR, and credit institutions or other licensed firms after a case-by-case assessment by their national central bank. In Germany that central bank is the Deutsche Bundesbank.

For a Frankfurt venue such as 21X, which holds a permission for a DLT trading and settlement system and settles against e-money tokens, Pontes is a second route for the cash leg. For a bank, the open question is which platforms it wants to reach through Pontes.

The Eurosystem published the Appia roadmap on March 11, 2026. Appia is a strategic initiative for a European tokenized financial ecosystem in which central bank money stays at the center. It weighs a single shared network against several interconnected networks, aims at common standards and European governance, and is to end with a blueprint in 2028. The roadmap came with a questionnaire for market feedback.

The choice between one shared ledger and several connected ones is the same question the Bank for International Settlements tests with commercial banks in Project Agora.

Pontes was named among the frameworks that make DLT-based payments possible at the Frankfurt Forum on Digital Assets & Applications, where a panel with Deutsche Bundesbank, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank and AllUnity discussed which form of money should settle DLT-based markets. Finance Loop is a strategic partner of the Digital Euro Association and a partner of its Digital Euro Conference in Frankfurt, which covers wholesale CBDC next to the digital euro.

Pontes is the Eurosystem's DLT settlement service. It links market DLT platforms with T2 so that transactions on those platforms settle in euro central bank money. Its initial launch was on September 21, 2026.

Pontes is a service in operation that connects existing DLT platforms with the TARGET Services. Appia is a design track that runs until a blueprint in 2028 and asks how a tokenized wholesale market in Europe should be organized.

No. The digital euro is a planned central bank currency for people and merchants. Pontes settles wholesale transactions between financial firms against the central bank money banks already hold in T2. The page on the digital euro in Germany covers the retail project.

Not every platform. DLT settlement systems and DLT trading and settlement systems need one, while central securities depositories, overseen payment systems, central counterparties and supervised credit institutions can connect under their own authorization, the last after a case-by-case assessment.