The ECB’s 2 October Governing Council decision list records approval of the agreement between the Bundesbank and Eurosystem central banks governing the provision and use of Pontes. It says the agreement provides the binding legal framework for a production-grade system and was approved on 11 August. The Market Infrastructure Board recommended an initial launch on 21 September.
The related launch release confirms that Pontes went live on 21 September. Banks and market infrastructures are joining gradually, with an initial group already onboarded. Core services will expand over time, with full implementation expected by 2028.
FMI WORLD analysis: Pontes moves tokenised settlement beyond experimentation by connecting transactions on distributed ledgers to central bank money under an operating legal framework. The transition reduces settlement-asset risk without requiring every token platform to become a central-bank ledger. Its value will depend on participant adoption, operating-hour expansion, interoperability and resilient links between asset ledgers and the Eurosystem.
Pontes is an interim production service, not the final Appia architecture and not a wholesale central bank digital currency.
Euro-area banks, central securities depositories, tokenised-asset platforms, issuers, custodians, securities-settlement operations, treasury teams and public-sector debt issuers seeking delivery-versus-payment in central bank money.
Watch actual transaction volumes, additional bank and DLT-platform connections, service and operating-hour expansion, operational incidents, and the 2028 milestones for full Pontes implementation and the Appia blueprint.