Eurosystem brings central bank money to tokenised finance

The Eurosystem today launched Pontes, a solution that enables wholesale transactions in tokenised assets to be settled in central bank money. Pontes is the first initiative under the Eurosystem’s strategic programme to make central bank money fit for a tokenised future and to support the development of this rapidly evolving financial ecosystem. “The Eurosystem is working to enable a more integrated, innovative and resilient European financial market in the digital age,” said Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB. “We will continue to make progress in close collaboration with the market.” Tokenisation is the process of issuing or representing assets in the form of digital “tokens”, typically recorded on distributed ledger technology (DLT) networks.