Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo issues €10 million in tokenized commercial paper

Recently, Intesa Sanpaolo issued €10 million of commercial paper using Clearstream’s D7 tokenization platform. The bank was also an investor in the deal, which was settled using the Bank of Italy’s TIPS Hashlink solution, one of the three payment options in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) trial for wholesale DLT settlement in central bank money. In other words, instead of using on-chain cash, it used the Hashlink interoperability mechanism (hash time-locked contracts, or HTLCs) to settle transactions through the TIPS payment system, Europe’s main instant payment solution. The ECB pilot began in May and will end at the end of this month, and the above transaction is the second to use the TIPS Hashlink option. The other transaction involved a €25 million digital bond issued by Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) in July. Intesa Sanpaolo was the underwriter and sole investor.