BaFin grants Boerse Stuttgart a DLT Pilot Regime trading and settlement permission for Seturion

Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has granted Boerse Stuttgart Group a specific permission to operate Seturion as a DLT trading and settlement system (DLT TSS) under the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime, Regulation (EU) 2022/858. Under the regulation, a DLT TSS is a DLT multilateral trading facility or DLT settlement system that combines the services of both.

The group announced the permission on 20 October. It said BaFin granted it “following a licensing process conducted together with ESMA and the ECB”, and that the permission is the regulatory basis for Seturion to operate as a pan-European digital settlement platform for banks, brokers and trading venues. Boerse Stuttgart Group also describes itself as the first exchange group in Europe to obtain a DLT TSS licence. That is the company’s own claim.

What the register shows

ESMA’s list of authorised DLT market infrastructures gives more detail than the announcement:

• Operator: Baden-Württembergische Wertpapierbörse GmbH.
• Infrastructure: Seturion, a DLT trading and settlement system in Germany, supervised by BaFin as the national competent authority.
• Start of the specific permission: 16 October 2026, four days before the announcement. No end date is given.
• MiFID II exemptions: none.
• CSDR exemptions:
  • the definitions of “dematerialised form”, “transfer order” and “securities account” (Article 2(1), points 4, 9 and 28);
  • book-entry form (Article 3);
  • measures to prevent and to address settlement fails (Articles 6 and 7);
  • requirements for participation (Article 33);
  • communication procedures with participants and other market infrastructures (Article 35);
  • settlement finality (Article 39);
  • cash settlement (Article 40), which the register qualifies as relating to “the additional use of EMTs”, meaning e-money tokens;
  • standard link access, customised link access, and access between a CSD and another market infrastructure (Articles 50, 51 and 53).
• Lower thresholds set by the national authority: none.

Seturion is the fifth DLT TSS on the list. The others are:

• 21X (Germany, BaFin, from 3 December 2024);
• Axiology (Lithuania, Bank of Lithuania, from 9 July 2025);
• LISE (France, ACPR, from 13 October 2025);
• Securitize Europe (Spain, CNMV, from 26 November 2025).

The register also lists a DLT settlement system run by CSD Prague and a DLT MTF run by 360X.

Seturion’s exemptions are narrower than those of 21X, LISE and Securitize Europe. Those three also hold MiFID II exemptions on access to an MTF, together with CSDR exemptions on participants, transparency, integrity of the issue and account segregation, none of which appears in Seturion’s entry. Seturion’s Article 40 exemption is also the only one on the list limited to e-money tokens.

How the group says Seturion will work

The 20 October release says the platform “supports public and private blockchains, as well as settlement against on-chain money and central bank money”. It adds that trading venues connecting to Seturion “can offer trading of tokenized assets – without requiring an own DLT license”.

The PDF version of the release also claims that banks and brokers connecting to Seturion can benefit from “up to 90 percent lower costs”, shorter cycles and higher efficiency through direct peer-to-peer settlement. The release gives no baseline for that figure, and it does not appear in the shorter web version of the announcement.

The release names flatexDEGIRO, Nasdaq, Société Générale and SG FORGE as strategic partners, “with more partners to follow”. When Nasdaq announced its partnership on 9 March 2026, it said its European trading venues would connect to Seturion so that tokenised securities traded there could be settled through the platform, “with an initial focus on structured products”. At the time, Boerse Stuttgart Group chief executive Dr Matthias Voelkel called Nasdaq Seturion’s first partner.

Commenting on the permission, Voelkel said it was “not only the basis for establishing Seturion as the pan-European digital settlement platform” but also “an important step for turning a unified European capital market into reality”. Dr Lidia Kurt, Seturion’s chief executive, said it would allow the group to “leverage the potential of blockchain technology for the next-generation post-trade infrastructure in Europe”.

Neither the release nor the register gives a date for the first live settlement on Seturion.

In Switzerland, Seturion operates SeturionX, which the group describes as the first FINMA-licensed DLT trading system for tokenised assets.