ECB, EU Commission and ESMA seek members for tokenized securities standards group

Call for participants

The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) have announced a call for participants to join a group that will develop standards for the settlement and custody of tokenized securities. Bits.media reported the call on 10 November 2026.

A tokenized security is a conventional financial instrument, such as a bond or a share, whose ownership is recorded on a blockchain or a similar distributed ledger. Settlement is the step in which the asset and the payment change hands between buyer and seller; custody is who holds and safeguards the asset for its owner.

The first documents from the group are planned for early 2028, according to the same report.

What the report leaves open

The report did not name the group, say how many participants it will take, or describe how they will be chosen. It also did not say whether the resulting standards would be voluntary or linked to European Union rules, or which kinds of securities the work would cover first.

This article rests on a single report. No separate announcement from the ECB, the European Commission or ESMA was available to check the details against, and none of the three bodies is quoted directly in the report.