Pontes is the European Central Bank’s latest attempt to bring traditional financial infrastructure into the world of tokenized assets. The new system lets financial institutions settle wholesale tokenized transactions in central bank money, offering an alternative to private settlement assets such as stablecoins.
The ECB announced the launch on Monday as part of the Eurosystem’s broader strategy for tokenized finance. Pontes is starting with a core set of services, while its operating hours and capabilities are expected to expand gradually, with full implementation targeted for 2028.
At the center of the project is tokenization, the process of representing assets as digital tokens, usually on distributed ledger technology networks. The idea is to bring activities that are often handled separately — from issuance and trading to settlement, custody and servicing — closer together.
That could also make it easier to automate parts of financial transactions through smart contracts. For the institutions using these systems, the appeal is not simply putting assets on a blockchain. It is connecting that digital infrastructure to money that carries the ECB’s backing.
“Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenised finance ecosystem,” ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said. “It will give an important advantage to help it scale.”
Why Pontes is betting on central bank money
The ECB’s move follows a series of tests conducted by the Eurosystem in 2024 to explore how transactions based on distributed ledger technology could be settled in central bank money.
Those experiments pointed to a practical issue that can become easy to miss amid the excitement around tokenization: institutions still need a settlement asset they can treat as risk-free.
According to the ECB, participants in those trials identified access to central bank money as a key requirement for tokenized finance to expand. Pontes is designed to address that need while the market experiments with new forms of digital financial infrastructure.
The project is also part of a larger European effort. Alongside Pontes, the Eurosystem is developing Appia, a complementary initiative focused on exploring what an integrated ecosystem for DLT-based financial services could look like.
A blueprint for Appia is expected by 2028, the same year the ECB expects Pontes to reach full implementation. Together, the projects point toward a European model in which tokenized financial markets are connected more directly to established central bank infrastructure.
For Pontes, the message is relatively simple: putting assets on digital ledgers is only part of the equation. The money used to settle those transactions matters too.