Two legs. One custody confirmation. One write. One finality.
Traditional settlement decouples the cash and asset legs by days. Delivery versus payment binds them: both legs and the custody record commit in the same write to the canonical ledger, or none does. No reconciliation. No counterparty risk window.
Match
The order book matches a bid and an ask. Eligibility for both counterparties was verified pre-trade. The matcher emits a settlement instruction containing the asset leg, the cash leg, and the custody confirmation.
Commit
The settlement instruction is one transaction against the canonical ledger. The asset transfer, the cash transfer, and the custody record write together. There is no intermediate state.
Finalize
On commit, the trade is final. The supervisory feed sees the commit. The member firms see the commit. The regulator sees the commit. One record. One time.
Settlement finality
What DvP replaces.
Before
- Trade date T, settlement date T+1 or later.
- Cash and asset move on separate systems on separate days.
- Reconciliation between matched-but-not-settled records.
- A counterparty-risk window between match and settlement.
- A failed-trade workflow that exists because trades fail.
With DvP at commit
- Trade and settlement on the same write.
- One system. One record. One time.
- No reconciliation step. The match IS the settlement instruction.
- No counterparty risk window. Either both legs commit, or neither does.
- No failed-trade workflow at the layer level. A failed commit is a rolled-back transaction.