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Commercial Bank Money Tokens: The Missing Piece of the Tokenized Economy?
Description
Corporate balance sheets still run on commercial bank money, while the assets and business processes surrounding them are increasingly moving onto DLT networks. Commercial Bank Money Tokens (CBMTs) are designed to close that gap: they place a regulated bank liability directly on-chain without asking companies to adopt a fundamentally different form of money.
In this episode, Dr. Jonas Groß and Manuel Klein speak with Manfred Richels, Head of Corporate Payments at the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV), and Tim Bailey, Chief Commercial Officer at Red Date Technology and a leader of the Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN). They explain what makes a CBMT different from a stablecoin. A CBMT remains a claim against a regulated bank, can be redeemed at par into central bank money and may be interest-bearing. The DLT record becomes the primary source of truth.
The conversation follows the token across a multi-bank transaction. When money moves from Bank A to Bank B, the first bank’s token is burned and the recipient bank issues a new token representing its own liability. Settlement between the banks follows separately in central bank money. This architecture is intended to make commercial bank money usable in smart contracts while retaining established compliance, accounting and risk-management treatment.
Richels and Bailey also discuss the live Siemens–Evonik pay-per-use pilot, where sensor data and chemical consumption trigger an automated payment; programmable delivery-versus-payment; and agentic B2B payments in which an AI agent is cryptographically linked to an accountable person or entity. They examine the expansion of the CBMT initiative beyond Germany, the role of Pontes, Appia and Project Agorá, and the likely coexistence of tokenized deposits, stablecoins, CBDCs and conventional payment rails. At stake is a practical question: can banks make deposits programmable without sacrificing the legal certainty and controls that make them useful?
CBMT Sandbox Video Demonstration
Academic Paper - Structural Framework for Tokenized Money Networks
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