BIS Project Agorá Settles $1 Million in Tokenized Cross-Border Payment Trials

Summary

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced that its Project Agorá has successfully completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale cross-border payments. In these trials, 28 financial institutions and central banks settled a total of 800,000 Swiss francs, equivalent to about $1 million, across 17 different transaction scenarios. The payments involved tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits using six currencies: Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won, and US dollars, with an average settlement time of approximately 80 seconds.

Among the participants were major central banks such as the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, and the Swiss National Bank, as well as leading commercial banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered, and MUFG. Project Agorá, launched by the BIS in 2024, aims to explore improvements to cross-border wholesale payments through the use of tokenized assets.

Why it matters

The BIS highlighted that the July trials represent a significant milestone in demonstrating the potential for atomic settlements across multiple currencies and jurisdictions. The project continues its testing and development efforts to further refine the use of tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves for international payments. This development is important because it may advance the efficiency and speed of wholesale payment systems on a global scale.