The European Central Bank is examining three models for making central bank money available on programmable financial networks while retaining the two-tier system of central banks and commercial banks. ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel said the approaches include issuing reserves directly on a programmable platform, linking real-time settlement infrastructure to distributed-ledger technology, or backing private settlement tokens fully with central bank reserves. Pontes connects DLT-based transactions with Eurosystem settlement infrastructure, while Appia is studying longer-term market architectures including a unified ledger, connected networks and shared ledgers. The work comes as financial institutions test tokenized deposits and stablecoin settlement, including a Lloyds and Visa pilot that moved payment obligations across blockchain networks.