Boerse Stuttgart Group has become the first European stock exchange group to receive a DLT-TSS licence from Germany's financial regulator BaFin, a milestone that opens the door to a pan-European blockchain settlement platform built by the group, called Seturion.
The licence was granted as part of a procedure that also involved the European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Central Bank, placing the approval within the EU's framework for distributed ledger technology trading and settlement systems. For Boerse Stuttgart Group, the decision marks a formal recognition of a project it has been developing to modernise how securities are settled.
Seturion is designed to allow payments through digital means of payment on blockchain networks, or via central bank money, while securities are transferred directly between market participants. The platform supports both public and private blockchains, a flexibility the group says is central to its pitch to banks and brokers across the continent.
The group argues that the system could cut settlement costs for connected banks and brokers by up to 90 percent, a figure that reflects the reduction in intermediaries and manual reconciliation steps that blockchain-based settlement is meant to eliminate.
Importantly for other trading venues, connection to Seturion would let them offer tokenised assets to their clients without having to obtain their own DLT licence, potentially lowering the barrier for smaller exchanges and brokers to enter the tokenisation space.
European expansion plans
Boerse Stuttgart Group is already working with a number of financial firms as it prepares to roll out Seturion more widely across Europe. Partners named include flatexDEGIRO, Nasdaq, Société Générale and its blockchain unit SG FORGE.
Dr. Matthias Voelkel, chief executive of Boerse Stuttgart Group, framed the licence as a marker of the company's ambitions beyond its home market. "Receiving the first DLT TSS license for a European stock exchange group underscores our pioneering role for the digital capital market of the future," he said. "The license is not only the basis for establishing Seturion as a pan-European digital settlement platform. It is also an important step towards realizing a unified European capital market."
Lidia Kurt, who heads Seturion, pointed to the platform's intended openness as its defining feature. "By building Seturion as a digital settlement platform open to banks, brokers and trading venues across Europe, we are contributing to an efficient capital market," she said.
The approval comes as European regulators continue to test how traditional market infrastructure can accommodate distributed ledger technology under the bloc's pilot regime, with Boerse Stuttgart Group now positioned as the first exchange operator to clear that regulatory threshold.
