The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a bridge connecting tokenised-asset platforms to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services for wholesale settlement in central bank money. The arrangement enables atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement, in which an asset and its payment move together. It does not yet make wholesale settlement available around the clock: Pontes depends on T2 operating hours and requires tokenised central bank money balances to be defunded at the end of the day. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone says the Eurosystem plans to extend Pontes operating hours substantially by mid-2027 and reach 24/7/365 availability in 2028. Separately, the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agorá has tested cross-border payments using a shared programmable ledger that brings tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves into a single settlement process. Both initiatives address delays and liquidity demands in wholesale payments, but neither makes continuous, cross-border settlement available today.

TerraPay and J.P. Morgan have connected TerraPay Verify with Kinexys Liink so participating financial institutions can check recipient details before sending cross-border payments to mobile money wallets or bank accounts. Announced on October 22, 2026, the integration allows Liink participants to configure bi-directional API queries with TerraPay Verify. It extends a validation network that already covers account details in more than 70 countries to wallet-related checks. The partnership targets a source of payment failures: a 2026 LexisNexis Risk Solutions study cited during the rollout attributed 10% to 15% of cross-border payment failures to incorrect recipient or beneficiary details. Wallet identifiers can differ from conventional bank-account formats, making early checks useful but not a guarantee that a payment will complete. The companies have not publicly disclosed commercial terms, query pricing or country-by-country rollout plans, and the available information does not establish how much the integration will reduce failures in practice.

Mural has raised $15 million in Series A financing, bringing its total funding to $28 million. The company provides payment infrastructure that connects traditional banking and blockchain rails while managing the financial licenses, partner bank relationships and local settlement integrations behind them. Since launching its API in 2025, Mural says it has processed $2.1 billion in payments across 128 countries. The company plans to place more engineers directly with enterprise clients to address jurisdiction-specific regulatory and banking requirements. Its platform also uses a policy and compliance engine to apply controls such as approved counterparty lists, transfer caps and additional approvals for large transactions. Mural counts Deel, Opera and Axexo among its enterprise clients. The financing comes as research cited in the verified data points to substantial stablecoin payment activity, although the available figures measure different periods and types of flows. Mural did not disclose a valuation for the round.