BIS Says Project Agorá Completes Real-Value Testing for Tokenized Cross-Border Payments

TL;DR

• Project Agorá settled 800,000 Swiss francs, about $1 million, across 17 real-value scenarios involving 28 financial institutions and central banks in testing.
• The trials used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits across six currencies, with average settlement completed in approximately 80 seconds.
• After demonstrating atomic settlement in May, the initiative will continue testing whether its tokenized architecture can eventually support scalable wholesale cross-border payments as testing progresses.

The Bank for International Settlements says Project Agorá has completed real-value testing for tokenized wholesale cross-border payments, moving 800,000 Swiss francs, about $1 million, through 17 transaction scenarios. Twenty-eight financial institutions and central banks participated, settling funds across six major currencies. The experiment moved beyond simulated money and demonstrated that tokenized bank liabilities can support actual international settlement. That distinction matters because prototypes may prove technical logic without exposing participants to genuine value, operational coordination, or the consequences of failed execution across institutions working under different monetary and regulatory systems under real operational conditions.

Real-value settlement connects central and commercial bank money

The trials used tokenized central bank reserves alongside tokenized commercial bank deposits to settle Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars. Average settlement time was approximately 80 seconds. Project Agorá combined public-sector settlement assets with private-sector money inside the same experimental payment architecture. The structure addresses a difficult institutional puzzle: commercial banks need deposits that remain recognized liabilities, while central banks must preserve the finality and trust associated with reserve money when payments cross currencies, jurisdictions and separate financial infrastructures during wholesale transactions and still deliver rapid final settlement.

Participants included the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea and Swiss National Bank. Commercial institutions included JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and MUFG. The breadth of participation gave the test a multijurisdictional character rather than limiting it to a bilateral banking exercise. Coordination across numerous institutions also made the trial more demanding, since successful settlement required technical compatibility and synchronized processes among entities operating under different governance arrangements, currencies and internal systems without reducing the experiment to a single corridor through coordinated wholesale settlement.

Launched in 2024, Project Agorá examines whether tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can improve wholesale cross-border payments. In May, its prototype demonstrated atomic settlement across multiple currencies and jurisdictions, meaning connected transaction legs could complete together. The July real-value trials converted that earlier technical result into a more consequential operational milestone. Testing will continue as the initiative progresses, leaving an important question unresolved: whether the model can eventually move from carefully structured experiments into production environments where volume, compliance, liquidity and institutional accountability must function continuously at scale without constant manual intervention.