{"id":18917,"date":"2026-05-21T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/18917\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:43:08","slug":"siemens-evonik-pilot-multi-bank-cbmt-deposit-tokens-in-push-for-a-tokenized-sepa-ledger-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/18917\/","title":{"rendered":"Siemens, Evonik pilot multi- bank CBMT deposit tokens in push for a tokenized SEPA – Ledger Insights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Siemens and chemicals firm Evonik have conducted the first live transactions using Commercial Bank Money Tokens<\/a> (CBMT) as part of a pilot involving DZ Bank and Commerzbank. The payment related to a manufacturing process, involving IoT sensors and the consumption of Evonik chemicals. The milestone marks one of the first multi-bank deposit token<\/a> transfers in the Eurozone.<\/p>\n

The tokenized SEPA ambition<\/p>\n

The ambition extends well beyond Germany. DZ Bank\u2019s Claus George described CBMT<\/a> as \u201ca possible tokenized extension to existing payment systems, similar to what a Bank of Italy official<\/a> recently called for in relation to a tokenized extension of SEPA, but capable of handling all currencies\u201d. While French banks have expressed an interest in participating, the first international CBMT transactions are likely to take place between Germany and Singapore, not another EU country. There are also discussions with US and UK banks, with the aim of scaling the network quickly. The challenge is European banks have to check with each of their national supervisors, as there is no unified European legislative framework for deposits. In contrast with Singapore, many EU national central banks have only recently warmed to tokenized deposits. BaFin has approved participation in Germany.<\/p>\n

Enjoying this article? It\u2019s the kind of coverage we produce regularly for Ledger Insights Pro subscribers. This one is ungated. Subscribe<\/a> to get more like it.<\/p>\n

The SEPA reference is also instructive when it comes to architecture, governance and funding. \u201cThis is not about building the next walled garden. This is open,\u201d he said. Multiple times during the interview he stated that the goal is categorically not to create a financial market infrastructure (FMI). It\u2019s just a network. \u201cThere is no organization funding SEPA,\u201d he said, adding that he\u2019s not sure funding is required because infrastructure can be shared.<\/p>\n

Openness is a core feature of the design. Rather than getting corporate DLTs to synchronize with bank networks, the banks issue deposit tokens onto corporate networks. In this case, the assets and money were transferred on the European Public Network, in what George described as a unified ledger approach. \u201cWe are bringing the asset leg and cash leg finally together, and this is where you really get better processes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

From IoT to agentic payments<\/p>\n

While industrial use cases such as this pilot are seen as core, there are plenty of other relevant applications. George was reluctant to prescribe specific applications, preferring to leave the scope open. \u201cIt is more about, \u2018Here\u2019s some money. Do what you want,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That said, the project has been designed with emerging use cases in mind. CBMT supports eight decimal places for micropayments, a feature that has been part of the specification for roughly two years. Corporates in the CBMT working group have recently raised agentic commerce as a potential application.<\/p>\n

The positioning matters because stablecoins<\/a> are often assumed to be the default on-chain payment instrument. George sees the two as complementary rather than competing. \u201cThe big question is do stablecoins get 80% of the market shares or eight?\u201d he said. Stablecoins have the advantage of being live, with clear regulatory frameworks in both the US and EU. For corporates, the deposit token is the more natural instrument, and it can serve as the payment layer for whatever applications companies choose to build on top, whether that is agentic payments, programmable supply chain finance or crypto asset trading.<\/p>\n

George confirmed discussions about using CBMT deposit tokens for securities settlement on the Regulated Layer One<\/a> (RL1) network, where DZ Bank is a member. The ECB\u2019s Pontes <\/a>could provide a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlement in the background. While he is keen to see this happen because it would create a fully tokenized market, he wants to prioritize corporate use cases. With RL1, which mainly involves banks, \u201cwe are somehow playing with ourselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The road to launch<\/p>\n

It has been almost five years since the German Banking Industry Committee (GBIC) published its whitepaper \u201cEurope needs new money\u201d. So when will CBMT go live? George provided a caveat about approval from various EU central banks. With that in mind, he estimated between six months and two years for CBMT to reach the market as a product with meaningful adoption. The critical barrier is not technology. \u201cScale. Number of people joining. That\u2019s all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

George noted that the Qivalis<\/a> euro stablecoin project, where DZ Bank is also a participant, attracted a dozen bank members in relatively short order. This week it announced the addition of another 25<\/a> banks. \u201cWould like to have the same share of attention actually,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Siemens and chemicals firm Evonik have conducted the first live transactions using Commercial Bank Money Tokens (CBMT) as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21002],"tags":[20305,22317,22318,22319,22320,3487,22321,22322,22323,22324,22325,22326,22327,7077,6487,22328,22329,22330,22331],"class_list":["post-18917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-siemens","tag-basf","tag-cbmt","tag-cbmt-sandbox","tag-commercial-bank-money","tag-commercial-bank-money-tokens","tag-commerzbank","tag-deposit-tokens","tag-distributed-ledger","tag-dlt","tag-dz-bank","tag-evonik","tag-feature","tag-gft","tag-payments","tag-siemens","tag-tokenization","tag-tokenized-cash","tag-tokenized-deposits","tag-tokenized-payments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}