Twenty-eight banks, including JPMorgan, Citi, and UBS, have completed a Bank for International Settlements-led pilot settling tokenised cross-border payments.
The initiative, known as Project Agorá, brought together five central banks and 28 commercial lenders, including JPMorgan, Citi, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered, to test whether tokenisation could modernise the infrastructure underpinning international payments.
Testing tokenised reserves and deposits across six currencies
The pilot processed approximately USD one million in real-value transactions across six currencies: the USD, the EUR, the GBP, the JPY, the CHF, and the KRW. Payments settled in an average of around 80 seconds, despite the prototype not being directly integrated with the banks' existing payment infrastructure, according to the BIS report.
Unlike privately issued stablecoins, such as those from Circle and Tether, Project Agorá tokenised two forms of traditional bank money: central bank reserves, which commercial banks use to settle with one another, and commercial bank deposits held by customers. The project tested settlement of corporate and interbank payments, as well as foreign exchange transactions.
Addressing correspondent banking inefficiencies
Cross-border payments typically pass through multiple correspondent banks, with each institution maintaining separate records before funds are finally settled. The BIS pilot instead placed tokenised money on a shared ledger, allowing participating banks to complete transactions while referencing a single, shared record of ownership and payment status.
The project also tested simultaneous settlement of foreign exchange payments, enabling banks to exchange two currencies at the same time rather than waiting for one leg of the transaction to settle before completing the other. In addition, this structure is intended to reduce the risk of one party transferring funds without receiving the corresponding currency in return. Participating banks reported that the platform improved the ability to track payments from initiation to completion and that it operated alongside existing payment systems rather than replacing them.
Part of a broader tokenisation trend
Project Agorá forms part of a wider set of wholesale tokenisation initiatives being explored by central banks and commercial lenders, including efforts underway at the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. These projects reflect growing interest across the financial sector in applying distributed ledger technology to wholesale payment infrastructure, alongside separate growth in privately issued stablecoins and tokenised money market and private credit funds.
The BIS has not indicated a timeline for moving Project Agorá beyond the pilot stage or for wider adoption of the tested infrastructure. The results add to a growing body of evidence from central banks examining whether tokenised forms of central bank and commercial bank money could coexist with, or eventually replace, elements of the current correspondent banking model.
