According to Odaily, Intesa Sanpaolo, an Italian bank, has issued €10 million in commercial paper utilizing Clearstream's D7 tokenization platform. The bank also acted as the investor in this transaction, settling it through the TIPS Hashlink solution provided by the Bank of Italy. This method is part of the European Central Bank's (ECB) experiment with wholesale DLT settlement in central bank money, offering three payment options.
Instead of using on-chain cash, the transaction was settled via the TIPS payment system, a leading instant payment solution in Europe, using the Hashlink interoperability mechanism, also known as hash time-locked contracts (HTLC). This transaction marks the second instance of using the TIPS Hashlink option since the ECB's pilot began in May, which is set to conclude at the end of this month.
The previous transaction involved a €25 million digital bond issued by Italy's Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) in July, with Intesa Sanpaolo serving as both the underwriter and sole investor. This ongoing pilot by the ECB aims to explore the potential of distributed ledger technology in enhancing the efficiency and security of financial transactions within the central banking system.