ECB sets 2027 date for T+1 settlement as tokenised finance push gathers pace
Europe will settle securities trades one day after execution from 11 October 2027, cutting the gap between trade and payment from two days to one, European Central Bank executive board member Piero Cipollone said. He framed the move not as a technical tweak but as a catalyst for modernising the continent's post-trade plumbing, arguing that inefficiencies tolerated under a two-day cycle will be far harder to sustain once settlement tightens to T+1.
Cipollone said the ECB, the European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Commission all back the market's preparations, coordinated by the EU T+1 Industry Committee. The Eurosystem's own TARGET2-Securities platform already settles substantial volumes on a T+1 and even same-day basis, he said, and changes to its night-time settlement process are planned for June 2027, ahead of the October migration.
The central bank is also building for what comes after. Since 30 March it has accepted marketable assets issued in distributed ledger technology-based central securities depositories as eligible collateral, and it is assessing whether DLT-based assets outside currently eligible settlement systems could qualify too. Since 21 September, its Pontes platform has let wholesale transactions in tokenised assets settle in central bank money, linking market DLT platforms to TARGET Services.
Pontes will be extended in steps, with significantly longer operating hours by mid-2027 and 24/7/365 availability in 2028, Cipollone said. The Eurosystem also plans to offer immediate settlement finality on its DLT platform as early as next year. Alongside this, its Appia initiative aims to deliver a blueprint by 2028 setting out findings, recommendations and principles for an integrated European tokenised finance ecosystem.
A report published on the Appia roadmap consultation, Cipollone said, confirmed broad market support for a tokenised finance ecosystem anchored in central bank money and a high willingness among respondents to contribute, giving a strong basis to develop Appia as a public-private partnership. He was clear that existing infrastructure is not being retired: T2S will keep serving European securities markets, and tokenised platforms will develop alongside it. Innovation, he said, should help Europe overcome fragmentation rather than recreate it in digital form.
