BIS Project Agorá settles $1 million in tokenized cross-border payment trials

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said Project Agorá completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale cross-border payments, with 28 financial institutions and central banks settling about 800,000 Swiss francs (about $1 million) across 17 transaction scenarios.

The BIS said Thursday that the tests used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle payments in Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars, with an average settlement time of about 80 seconds.

Participants included the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea and the Swiss National Bank, alongside commercial banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and MUFG.

Project Agorá is a BIS initiative launched in 2024 to explore how tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can improve cross-border wholesale payments. In May, the project reported that its prototype demonstrated atomic settlement across multiple currencies and jurisdictions.

The BIS said the July trials marked an important milestone and that testing will continue as Project Agorá progresses.

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