Pontes' First 13 Users: Six German, None Italian

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on 21 September, a service that lets banks settle trades in tokenised assets in central bank money. The European Central Bank named 13 financial institutions and four ledger operators that had finished onboarding and could use it immediately, and said the Bundesbank had also joined as a participant.

Six of the 13 institutions are German. None is Italian, although ten Italian-incorporated entities took part in the 2024 trials Pontes grew out of.

What launched

Pontes connects privately run distributed ledger platforms to T2, the Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system. When a tokenised bond or fund unit changes hands on one of those platforms, the cash side of the trade can now settle in euro central bank money. In the Eurosystem's 2024 tests, participants said access to that kind of risk-free settlement asset was crucial to wider use of the technology.

The ECB says Pontes starts with a core set of services. Enhanced features and longer operating hours will be added gradually, with full implementation expected by 2028.

In a second release the same day, the ECB said it had begun preparing to invest a small part of its own funds in tokenised securities, starting with euro-denominated bonds of euro area governments, agencies and European supranational institutions, and settling the purchases through Pontes. It has not set a date.

On time, and no longer called a pilot

In July 2025 the ECB's Governing Council said it planned to "launch a pilot for Pontes by the end of the third quarter of 2026". In March 2026 it said Pontes would be "launched in the third quarter of 2026". The launch came nine days before that quarter ended.

The word pilot does not appear in the 21 September release. It describes an initial group ready to start using Pontes and more participants connecting in the coming months. The release does not say whether the change in wording reflects a change in status, and HaiPay does not infer one.

Who is on the first list

The 13 are BayernLB, Deutsche Bank, DekaBank, DZ Bank, KfW and NRW.BANK from Germany; ABANCA, Cecabank and Santander from Spain; Caisse des Dépôts, Memo Bank and Société Générale from France; and the European Investment Bank. Four of them, CDC, the EIB, KfW and NRW.BANK, are development or promotional institutions owned by governments.

The four ledger operators are Axiology, an investment firm authorised in Lithuania; Cashlink and SWIAT, both based in Frankfurt; and Clearstream, the securities depository arm of Deutsche Börse. Counting the Bundesbank, nine of the 18 names are based in Germany, ten if Clearstream is included.

Checked against the 2024 trials

The ECB still links to the list of organisations its Governing Council approved for the 2024 exploratory work, dated 21 June 2024. HaiPay counted 64 distinct entities on it, the same number the ECB reports.

Eight of the 13 day-one institutions were on that list. So were three of the four operators, Axiology, Cashlink and Clearstream, and the Bundesbank. Six names are new: ABANCA, Caisse des Dépôts, Memo Bank, NRW.BANK, Santander and SWIAT. The French Caisse des Dépôts should not be confused with Italy's Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which took part in the trials but is not on the day-one list.

Most of the 2024 participants are not on the first list. They include BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, UBS and Euroclear, and domestic banks such as Commerzbank, CaixaBank, ABN AMRO and Rabobank. The ten Italian-incorporated entities, among them Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, are all absent. No Dutch bank is on the first list either.

What the list does not show

Absence from the first list is not evidence of a decision to stay out. The ECB says additional participants are committed to connecting in the coming months, without naming them. Any institution with access to T2 is eligible to join as a participant.

None of the 13 day-one participants is a payment or e-money institution. All are banks or public financial institutions.

One small inconsistency in the ECB's own record: its December 2024 summary said participants completed more than 40 trials and experiments, while every later ECB statement HaiPay checked, from July 2025 onwards, says more than 50. The count of 64 participants has not changed.

HaiPay read the ECB documents through Internet Archive copies captured on or after the day of publication, because the ECB site was not reachable from HaiPay's network on 22 September. HaiPay did not contact any organisation named.

What to watch

Which names the ECB adds in the coming months, and whether the first Italian and Dutch banks are among them.

When the ECB's Executive Board sets the timing of its own tokenised bond purchases, which would make the central bank one of Pontes' users.

And the operating hours. Longer hours are promised but not dated, and for ledger platforms that trade around the clock they are the feature that matters most.