Polish Banks and Tokenization: The Cost of Inaction (2026)

"This is not a priority"

Is that really how Polish banks think about tokenization? Is it not the same tone people used 25 years ago about internet banking? Back then everyone was right too. Internet banking really was not a priority. For a few years. Then it stopped being a choice. And the banks that hesitated spent years catching up. We are in the same moment now. Just on a shorter cycle.

Tokenization is already banking infrastructure

JPMorgan settles billions of dollars a day through Kinexys. Not in pilot. In production. Tokenized bank deposits, programmable payments, settlement in seconds, intraday repo. Citi runs the same playbook with Citi Token Services. Société Générale issued its own EUR stablecoin (EURCV) and brought it onto Canton Network. Goldman Sachs issues digital bonds on GS DAP. BlackRock launched its tokenized fund BUIDL and pulled in several billion in assets within three months. BBVA, BNY Mellon, HSBC, each of them runs digital asset infrastructure in production.

These are not technology curiosities. These are the institutions Tier-1 Polish banks benchmark themselves against. They have already decided.

What is actually happening

Three areas worth understanding.

1. Money and payments

Tokenized bank deposits (deposit tokens) and regulated stablecoins act as a settlement layer. Settlement in seconds instead of hours. Payments 24/7, no cut-offs, no nostro pre-funding. Programmable, meaning "pay when event X happens" runs without manual intervention. BMW and Siemens are already automating corporate treasury this way.

2. New products and asset tokenization

Bonds, funds, securities, invoices, private credit, real estate, all issued as tokens, with smart contracts handling the full lifecycle. Tokenization of US treasuries by Ondo Finance, private debt by Figure and Securitize, money market funds by BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. Tens of billions of dollars of assets, in production.

3. Custody and institutional trust

Citi, BBVA, BNY are building regulated platforms for institutional digital asset custody. A capability that will soon stop being a differentiator and become the baseline.

View from Poland: we are late, but the window is still open

In my view, the Polish banking sector is essentially out of the game in these areas. We have excellent payment infrastructure, a strong sector, technically excellent people. And practically zero production tokenization deployments in Tier-1 banks. Meanwhile, several things are converging at the same time.

✓ MiCA gave the EU its first real legal framework for e-money tokens, stablecoins and CASPs. Regulation went from blocker to framework.
✓ Qivalis, a consortium of 37 European banks including Bank Pekao S.A. (alongside ING, UniCredit, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, BBVA and others), is building a shared euro stablecoin with launch planned for H2 2026. What comes out of it will be infrastructure that a Polish bank can either join as a peer or use as someone else's client on someone else's terms.
✓ JPMD, JPMorgan's USD deposit token, is already running in production on Base. A euro version (the JPME ticker is already reserved) and expansion to further networks, Canton among them, are on the way. Which means: a giant of cross-border corporate settlement is building its own settlement layer, independent of intermediary banks, first in dollars, with euro queued up.

Every one of these vectors pushes Polish banks in the same direction. Either you move in actively, or you become the back office.

The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of investment

Four risks, all already playing out on Western markets:

✓ Fintechs are taking the margin. The most profitable parts of the value chain (programmable payments, instant settlement, treasury automation) go to technology providers, not to banks.
✓ Dependence on BigTech and other people's consortia is growing. Without your own infrastructure you become a client of someone else's. You accept their pace, their rules, their fees.
✓ Technical debt accumulates. Every year of delay is higher cost and more weeks of later entry. The learning curve in custody, on-chain compliance and audit-ready smart contracts does not shrink by itself.
✓ Tokenization starts bypassing the bank. This is the most dangerous one. If assets start being issued, settled and held on-chain without the bank, the bank loses not a product. It loses its place in the flow of transactions.

The question is not "is blockchain worth investing in". The question is "what does the absence of that investment cost".

Where to start: a first step that works from day one

Realistically, the first step should have three properties: be at the core of the business, work without waiting for the rest of the market, deliver a measurable result within three months. The best fit is tokenization of bank money, meaning e-money and deposits. A bank is a licensed issuer of electronic money and deposits. The start can happen inside a closed, controlled loop: internal treasury, intra-group settlement, a selected group of corporate clients. That is exactly how Citi Token Services started, and how JPM Coin works. The product works the moment the bank says "yes". It does not require five other banks to agree, nor a change in legislation.

And then the same foundation opens the next things. Programmable corporate payments. Settlement for tokenized assets. Multi-currency issuance. Over time, a full digital asset platform.

What this means long-term

A bank that controls the digital asset layer is in a different position than a bank that only uses it. This is not a product difference. It is a structural one, in economics, in the customer relationship, in control over the settlement layer.

The difference between those two positions starts with the decision on the first step.

Polish Banks and Tokenization: The Internet Banking Moment, on a Shorter Cycle