Pontes Settles ESM's First Digitally Native Benchmark Bond of €1 Billion

The European Stability Mechanism's first digitally native benchmark bond was settled on the Eurosystem's Pontes platform. Pontes links market distributed ledger platforms to the Eurosystem's TARGET Services to settle wholesale transactions in central bank money.

Pontes settled the issuance of the European Stability Mechanism's first digitally native benchmark bond of 1 billion euro on 2 November 2026. Piero Cipollone, a member of the ECB's Executive Board, disclosed the transaction to the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in Brussels on 10 November 2026.

Pontes is the Eurosystem's distributed ledger technology solution that links market DLT platforms and TARGET Services to settle DLT-based wholesale transactions in central bank money. Market participants can settle on the Eurosystem DLT platform with cash tokens, or in T2, the Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system.

Cipollone said 18 market participants and market DLT operators were onboarded on day one of the platform's launch.

This affects

From ClearingPost's structured records, not from the article text; each row carries its own source.

T2 / TARGETRTGS · ECB / Eurosystem · Eurozone

Summary names “TARGET” · Operator source · European Central Bank

NowHours: 02:00–17:00 UTC · Mon–Fri · published scheduleService condition: not monitored

next supported item for T2 / TARGET · as of 11 Nov 2026

28 Nov 2026RELREL T2 R2026.NOV release deployment · release · confirmed
closed · previously 14 Nov 2026
ECB - MIP News (4 September 2026)source ↗

Pontes Settles ESM's First Digitally Native Benchmark Bond of €1 Billion

This affects

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Earlier on T2 / TARGET