Axiology Gains TARGET Cash Access as Pontes Goes Live

Axiology is one of four DLT operators live on Pontes, the Eurosystem bridge that from 21 September 2026 lets tokenised securities settle in central bank money. The Vilnius venue already clears digital bonds against euro stablecoins. Pontes gives it a second cash leg, instructed into TARGET Services, which is how a small Baltic trading-and-settlement system tries to bring commercial banks onto its rails without asking them to leave central bank money.

A Limited Bridge Into TARGET Services

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on 21 September as the first piece of a programme to keep central bank money usable when wholesale assets sit on distributed ledgers. It is not the retail digital euro, and it is not a finished 24-hour rail. The service starts with a core set of functions. Longer hours and extra features are due in stages, with full implementation expected by 2028.

Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, put the switch-on in those terms on the day itself.

Today marks an important step for European finance.

With the launch of Pontes, we are providing the infrastructure for settling tokenised asset transactions in central bank money, supporting innovation and integration across Europe.

Read more https://t.co/5afCdHCA8z pic.twitter.com/HumFyC8ShU

— Christine Lagarde (@Lagarde) September 21, 2026

Piero Cipollone, a member of the ECB’s Executive Board, tied the design to scale rather than to a new coin.

Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenised finance ecosystem. It will give an important advantage to help it scale.

Piero Cipollone, Member of the ECB Executive Board, 21 September 2026

The build sits on tests run between May and November 2024, when 64 participants across nine jurisdictions settled nearly €1.6 billion in central bank money on three national trial setups. Pontes folds that work into one Eurosystem offering. Appia, the companion track, is still aimed at a blueprint by 2028 rather than at live cash.

PONTES AT SWITCH-ON

• Go-live: 21 September 2026, with more firms due to connect in the following months.
• DLT operators: Axiology, Cashlink, Clearstream and SWIAT.
• Named banks and public issuers: 13, plus Deutsche Bundesbank in a market-participant role.
• Finish line: full implementation expected by 2028.

That timetable is why the launch day is easy to over-read. The cash still finalises in the existing central bank system. The new piece is the instruction path from a market ledger into TARGET.

Axiology Holds a Rare Combined Trading Licence

Axiology issues, trades, holds and settles digital securities in one regulated shop, with a first focus on bonds. It also holds a pan-European MiFID brokerage licence. Martynas Pilkis, business development officer, says the scarcer paper is the DLT Trading and Settlement System permission under the EU pilot regime for DLT market infrastructures.

“There are only four DLT Trading and Settlement Systems in Europe,” he said. That four is the EU licence class. It is not the same four names on Pontes. The Pontes operator list mixes a Vilnius TSS with Clearstream in Luxembourg and Cashlink and SWIAT in Frankfurt.

The Bank of Lithuania granted UAB Axiology DLT the TSS permission on 9 July 2025, after ESMA and the ECB reviewed how the venue reaches settlement finality. “It’s not only the national regulator vetting you, but also the European Securities and Markets Authority, and the European Central Bank for your settlement mechanism,” Pilkis said. “These things have been carefully reviewed, and it’s not easy to jump onto that train.”

Axiology said in February 2026 that it had raised a €5 million seed round, taking total funds to €7 million, with the system already live. Pilkis, who spent two years with the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures in Basel on the G20 cross-border payments programme, says the firm worked with Deutsche Bundesbank from early on and joined tests of the Bundesbank trigger solution in spring 2024. Testing for the Pontes launch opened in July 2026, with user testing in August.

Speed is the pitch to supervisors who already have Clearstream in the room. “They really want to have us. They admire our speed because we have an agile technical team which can deliver fast,” Pilkis said.

Why the Cash Leg Still Runs Through TARGET

A tokenised bond trade has two sides: the security and the cash that pays for it. DLT can put the security on a shared record. The cash still has to be an asset a bank will hold at size. Pontes is the Eurosystem’s route for settling tokenised asset transactions in central bank money, so delivery and payment can be lined up in one go.

We are not dealing with cryptocurrency. We are dealing with financial instruments. But when you trade financial instruments on DLT-native infrastructure, you also need a settlement asset.

Martynas Pilkis, Business Development Officer, Axiology

Axiology already settles in euro-denominated stablecoins, same day or atomically, depending on the client. Pontes adds central bank money as a second choice. Pilkis treats that as a credit question, not a branding one. “Stablecoins, for high-value payments, are not that good because you still have certain credit and liquidity risks.” Even tight coins have printed away from par. “If your stablecoin can trade for 87 cents per dollar, that’s not very good for serious payments. That’s why access to central bank money is very important.”

The ECB has a matching worry. If new venues grow and the cash leg stays on private coins, usage of central bank money in securities settlement falls. “What happens if central bank money is left behind and doesn’t give access to these new infrastructures? We will make do without central bank money, and maybe we will reduce its usage overall,” Pilkis said. “This is not something that the ECB would like to see.”

THE LIFECYCLE ON THE NEW RAIL

• Primary issuance: Axiology can instruct the cash leg when a digital bond is born.
• Secondary trades: The same path is meant to cover later sales between participants.
• Redemptions: Maturity cash can move in central bank money rather than only in a stablecoin.
• Coupons: Interest payments are in the test set, which is where a German public issuer has already booked a date.

The practical offer is a choice, not a swap. Fast, programmable cash stays on the stablecoin side. High-value cash can go through TARGET. Banks no longer have to pick DLT rails or central bank money.

KfW’s December Coupon Is the Live Deadline

Germany is not waiting for 2028 to put a payment on the new path. KfW, already named among the Pontes market participants, said a coupon on its third blockchain bond will use the Eurosystem pilot for the first time.

KFW’S THIRD CRYPTO BOND

The 23 September changeover, two days after Pontes went live, was the first time in Germany that the registrar, the register and the chain of a live crypto security were all swapped during the term, KfW said. Tokens could not move straight from Polygon to SWIAT because the two books use different standards, so DekaBank minted new tokens while Cashlink deleted the old ones. Investors were not moved. DZ BANK stayed the collective registered holder.

Tim Armbruster, KfW’s treasurer, said the next constraint is common standards, not a missing button. Marta Lambert Vinos, head of transaction management, said the test showed what already works and where interoperability is still missing. The dated cash event on Pontes is the interest payment in December 2026, not the 21 September go-live.

The ECB is preparing to sit on the same side of the trade. It said it has started work to put a small portion of its own funds into tokenised euro public-sector and European supranational securities, with those buys to settle through Pontes. The Executive Board will set size and timing after that groundwork, so the bank is a future buyer on the rail, not a live one yet.

The €100 Million Issuance Floor Has Not Moved

Pilkis expects fixed income to move first. In Germany he points to state-led work, “particularly from KfW.” In France he sees interest in putting part of the Negotiable European Commercial Paper market onto DLT. Axiology is also talking to banks about moving assets between entities in the same group, and to treasuries about sovereign deals. “Most treasuries are really interested in how we can make sovereign issuances on new rails, accessing new types of investors and saving money because the new system can be more cost-efficient.”

He does not expect a rush. “This will not be fast. As always when you’re moving with the public sector, it really takes time. I have this feeling that bigger countries, especially France and Germany, are prioritising these projects. Others are a little bit in wait-and-see mode.”

The issuer problem he wants the new rails to crack is a size cut, not a chain. “Today, if you’re issuing a fixed-income instrument in Europe and you’re not issuing roughly €100 million, obtaining ratings and accessing the broader market can be difficult.” That floor is a market habit, separate from KfW’s €100 million digital bond. Open digital books, he argues, could take smaller deals to investors without the same overhead. Until banks, brokers and investors actually sit on the same venue, that remains a claim about design rather than a change in who can issue.

Recruiting Commercial Banks Across the EU

For Axiology, Pontes is a distribution tool. The network today is “focused on brokerages and crowdfunding platforms.” With a TARGET cash path, “it’s the right time to grow the commercial-banking side.” The firm already has banking partners in the Baltics and wants more from across the EU. “Pontes is a great help with that.”

The first cohort is heavier on German and French names than on Baltic ones, which matches Pilkis’s wait-and-see map.

WHO COMPLETED PONTES ONBOARDING

Clearstream’s presence on the operator line is the incumbent hedge: the CSD is on the new bridge as well as on the old road. Axiology’s bet is that a TSS licence plus TARGET access is enough to sit in that company and still win bank flow that used to stop at national central securities depositories.

Programmability is the longer pitch. Today a commercial bank can automate a monthly utility payment for a client. In a tokenised market, Pilkis wants the holders themselves to attach that logic to the instrument. “If we see that emerge five or ten years from now, I’ll be very happy.”

National Sandboxes Can Recreate the Old Split

Pilkis’s wider complaint is the one Capital Markets Union papers have repeated for years: European market plumbing still follows national borders. Axiology was built as a pan-European venue from day one, which is only useful if the rules around it do not split again by member state.

Marius Jurgilas, CEO and founder, put the next bottleneck on a legislative file rather than on Pontes code. “The Market Integration and Supervision Package needs to move forward. Delaying it risks slowing the development of Europe’s digital capital markets just as the underlying infrastructure is becoming ready.” He also warned that separate national sandboxes, each with their own access rules, could copy the old fragmentation onto DLT books.

Settlement still has to stay a choice. Jurgilas wants fuller links between T2’s digital central bank money and SEPA, so a firm can pick a cash route by use case instead of feeding every trade through one model. That is a 2028-shaped demand, not a 21 September one.

The switch-on gave a Vilnius TSS a TARGET instruction path, put 13 banks and public issuers on the same list as Clearstream, and gave KfW a December coupon to run in central bank money. The product those parties will actually get, including the hours and the legal wrapping, is still being staged through 2028. France and Germany are moving. The rest of the map, on Pilkis’s telling, is watching.