BNP Paribas, the Eurozone’s largest bank by assets, has joined the sandbox of the Commercial Bank Money Token (CBMT) initiative, and Dutch bank ABN AMRO also now appears among the listed participants. The deposit token network has until recently been a largely German affair, with Commerzbank, DZ Bank, Helaba and UniCredit among the participants alongside industrial firms Siemens and Evonik. The additions suggest CBMT is evolving from a national to a European project.
That shift has been the stated goal for some time. In May, DZ Bank’s Claus George described CBMT as a possible tokenized extension of SEPA capable of handling all currencies, and noted that French banks had shown interest. The consortium has also held talks with banks in Singapore, the US and the UK. Because there is no single European framework for deposits, each bank must clear participation with its own national supervisor. BaFin gave German banks the green light after classifying CBMT as a deposit rather than an e-money token, so MiCA does not apply.
CBMT is not a single shared token. Each bank issues its own deposit token, either from an existing tokenized deposit system or from a core banking module that can be supplied. The unifying layer is the CBMT Bridge, built on messaging technology from UDPN. The Bridge connects bank systems to multiple industry DLT networks and handles interbank settlement, with tokens issued natively onto the corporate networks where the assets sit. For treasurers, that means one instrument that behaves like a bank deposit but can carry programmable payment logic.
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