The project aims to explore the role of tokenization in improving wholesale cross-border payments. Project Agorá operates as a public-private collaboration and involves seven central banks, namely Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, all convened by the BIS. AMINA Bank, along with other private financial institutions brought together by the IIF, will move forward to the next phase of the project, which focuses on how tokenization can enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments.
The project is based on the BIS's unified ledger concept, designed to investigate the integration of tokenized commercial bank deposits with tokenized wholesale central bank money. This integration aims to establish a programmable financial platform that could potentially improve the overall efficiency of the monetary system. The platform would leverage smart contracts and programmable elements while maintaining the existing two-tier financial structure.
In the company press release, officials from AMINA Bank stated that the bank is pleased to be part of Project Agorá, which they view as an important development in the evolution of cross-border payments. They highlighted that technologies like smart contracts and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are set to play a pivotal role in the future of banking, and also noted the growing market for asset tokenization, which is projected to reach USD 16 trillion by 2030, representing around 10% of the global GDP.
Project Agorá aims to address several inefficiencies in the current cross-border payment system. These include variations in legal, regulatory, and technical frameworks, differences in time zones and operating hours, and the repeated execution of financial integrity controls, such as anti-money laundering measures and customer verification, due to the involvement of multiple intermediaries in a single transaction.
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