Eurosystem selects members for the Pontes market contact group

10 October 2025

The Eurosystem has selected a number of financial market participants and central banks to join the Pontes market contact group. This selection process followed a call for expressions of interest launched in July.

The contact group will support and facilitate focused dialogue with the financial market concerning the Pontes project, the aim of which is to enable the settlement of distributed ledger technology (DLT) transactions in euro using central bank money. The members, which include DLT platform operators, market participants and central banks, were chosen following a call for expressions of interest.

The group will start its work in October 2025, focusing initially on the pilot phase – planned for launch in the third quarter of 2026 – and later on enhancements to the Pontes service.

To ensure transparency and information sharing, the Eurosystem will publish meeting outcomes and related documents on the ECB’s website.

The Pontes project is part of the Eurosystem’s efforts to provide a solution to the market for settling wholesale financial transactions in euro on market DLT platforms against central bank money. While Pontes is a short-term offering to the market, the subsequent “Appia” initiative will explore a potential integrated long-term solution. Both Pontes and Appia build on the successful exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlement.