What to know:
- Tokenized payments could cut cross-border settlement times from days to seconds.
- Project Agorá brings together seven central banks and more than 40 financial institutions.
- The BIS says tokenization may reduce fraud, credit risk, and payment delays.
Global payments are changing fast. The latest push comes from the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS. Its new report on Project Agorá shows how tokenized payments could reshape cross-border finance.
The project focuses on one major problem. International payments are still slow, expensive, and complex. Businesses often wait days for settlement. Banks must also deal with high operational costs, fraud checks, and liquidity risks. The BIS believes tokenized payments may offer a solution.
Cross-border payments reached $195 trillion in 2024. That figure could climb to $320 trillion by 2032, according to FXC Intelligence. The pressure to modernize the system is growing.
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Tokenized Payments Could Transform Global Finance
Project Agorá combines tokenized central bank reserves with tokenized commercial bank deposits. The system runs on a two-layer blockchain structure.
The design allows what the BIS calls “atomic settlement.” In simple terms, transactions settle at the same time or not at all. That removes gaps between payment and settlement. It also cuts counterparty and credit risk.
The BIS said settlement can happen in seconds once liquidity is locked.
The platform also works around the clock. That matters because many international transactions are delayed by different banking hours across countries.
Another key feature is compliance screening. The system allows anti-money laundering, sanctions, and fraud checks to run in parallel instead of one after another. The BIS says this could lower the high number of false positives seen in current systems.
Tokenized Payments Gain Central Bank Support
Project Agorá is one of the largest collaborations yet between central banks and private financial institutions. Participants include the Bank for International Settlements, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and the Swiss National Bank.
The project is now moving toward real-value testing with actual transactions and currencies. Still, challenges remain. The BIS said governance rules, cybersecurity systems, and liquidity-saving mechanisms need more work before full implementation.
Central banks are no longer watching tokenization from the sidelines. They are actively building the next generation of payment infrastructure.
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