On 21 September 2026, a bank could pay for a tokenized bond, a bond issued as a token on a blockchain, with central bank money in a live service for the first time. Deutsche Bank, Santander and Clearstream were among the first in.
Until then, tokenization had a weak spot nobody liked to talk about: the cash. The bond moved in seconds. The payment came in a stablecoin with issuer risk, a tokenized deposit with bank risk, or through the old rails a day later.
If your bank plans to trade tokenized assets, the question is no longer whether the cash leg can be safe. It is which settlement asset to use for which trade, and what you must build before the first one.
Delivery versus payment (DvP) is the rule behind all of this: the asset is delivered only if the payment is made, at the same moment. If one leg fails, neither happens. DvP removes principal risk, the risk of handing over securities or cash and getting nothing back.
Think of selling a car at a notary. Keys and money change hands at the same table, at the same moment. If the transfer does not clear, you keep the keys.
What is delivery versus payment?
DvP is older than any blockchain. In 1992 the BIS Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems classified it into three models, and each one trades liquidity against risk:
| Model | How it settles | What it means for the bank |
|---|---|---|
| DvP 1 | Asset and cash, trade by trade | Lowest risk, needs the most liquidity during the day |
| DvP 2 | Asset trade by trade, cash netted at day end | Saves cash, exposure until the evening |
| DvP 3 | Both netted at day end | Least liquidity, longest exposure |
Settlement on DLT sits closest to DvP 1, but in real time. Today, most EU securities trades still settle two days after the trade (T+2). Those two days are where the risk and the collateral sit, and they are about to shrink.
Why is DvP harder on DLT?
Because the bond and the cash live on different ledgers, and something has to lock one while the other moves. The two systems also disagree on basics: when a transfer is final, which hours they run, and what happens when one leg fails. Back to the notary: the keys are in one office and the money in a bank across town, and someone has to make sure both arrive at the same moment.
For a bank that is a balance-sheet question. Any gap between the two legs is exposure your risk team must cap with limits or collateral, or close with a settlement layer that keeps both legs in step.
The ECB's own answer is about the seller. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone warned in March 2026 that without tokenised central bank money, "a seller of a tokenised security may receive payment in an asset" exposed to price or credit risk. If you are weighing stablecoins against tokenized deposits for the cash leg, we compare both in tokenized deposits vs stablecoins.
How does ECB Pontes deliver DvP in central bank money?
Pontes is the notary, run by the central bank. It links the DLT platforms where tokenized bonds sit with T2, the Eurosystem's system for large euro payments between banks. Bond and cash settle together or not at all, and the payment is final in T2, with the same legal certainty as any interbank euro payment today. The ECB's Pontes page sets out the details.
The bigger news is the signal. A central bank now settles on DLT. That makes on-chain settlement a board-level topic, not an innovation-lab one.
But Pontes is open only to institutions with T2 access. Many payment institutions and EMIs, and most banks outside the euro area, do not have it today. For them, the route to DvP on DLT runs through stablecoins or tokenized deposits. The work around it is the same.
Which settlement asset fits which trade?
Pontes is one answer, not the only one. Each settlement asset fits a different trade:
| Settlement asset | Fits | Credit risk sits with | Limits today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central bank money (via Pontes) | Interbank trades in tokenized bonds | None: central bank money | Euro only, business hours, T2 access |
| Tokenized deposits | Payments for a bank's own clients | The issuing bank | Mostly within one bank's network |
| Stablecoins | 24/7 and cross-border flows | The issuer | Depends on the issuer's reserves and MiCA licence |
What do banks underestimate about DvP on DLT?
Pontes, a stablecoin or a tokenized deposit can settle the cash. None of them settles your reconciliation, your signing rules or the question of who owns the money when one leg fails. That work stays inside the institution, and it is where projects stall.
We have not built on Pontes. We have built the payment orchestration layer that sits around stablecoin and bank rails, and the same three questions came up every time: who owns the money mid-transfer, who is allowed to sign, and how balances reconcile across ledgers. Two projects show how.
Damisa: "Whose money is it right now?"
Damisa built one payment platform across bank and stablecoin rails. "A payment stops halfway. The money has left one place and not arrived at the other." A single euro corridor payment touched five separate balance positions, each with its own timing and fee. We gave every hop an owner, a ledger entry and an exception path, with daily reconciliation against partner balances. Partner APIs matured later than planned, and the schedule moved with them. The MVP went live after four and a half months. When a DvP leg fails, on Pontes or any other rail, your operations team will ask Damisa's question.
A payment company: "The issuer's decisions become your product roadmap"
A payment company did not want to depend on someone else's stablecoin, so it issued its own. As we wrote after the project, the requirements were the hard part, not the chain. We put minting and burning behind N independent signatures and checked every issuance against the reserve. Any wallet that holds settlement cash, cash tokens on Pontes included, needs the same answer: who is allowed to sign.
In both cases the chain worked. The rules on the institution's side decided whether the money was safe.
Where to start
Your board will ask why now. Two dates answer it. Pontes is live, and EU settlement moves to T+1 on 11 October 2027. With one day instead of two, manual reconciliation between ledgers stops scaling.
So pick the settlement asset trade by trade, then build one layer that connects all of them to your core: tokenized assets on one side, settlement and reconciliation on the other.
If DvP on DLT is on your 2027 plan, book an architecture review. We map your trades to settlement assets and list what you need to build before the first one.
