Seven financial institutions have joined Project Agorá, the BIS-led initiative exploring whether a shared platform for tokenized deposits and central bank reserves could improve wholesale cross border payments. The new participants are Barclays, BMO, CIBC, Rabobank, RBC, Scotiabank and Wells Fargo, spanning four jurisdictions. The project now involves eight central banks, after the Bank of Canada joined in May, and a private sector group approaching 50 institutions.
The Canadian contingent is the most striking. Five of Canada’s big six banks are now in the project. BMO, CIBC, RBC and Scotiabank all joined today, while TD Bank was already participating through its US subsidiary. Only National Bank of Canada is absent.
The timing is not coincidental. Last week the same six banks announced a joint Canadian dollar tokenized deposit initiative for domestic interbank payments, following OSFI’s confirmation that tokenized deposits receive equivalent regulatory treatment to conventional ones. Agorá gives that domestic project a cross border dimension, providing a path from domestic tokenized deposits to international settlement in tokenized central bank reserves. BMO has been particularly active in tokenized deposit development, having partnered with CME Group and Google Cloud on a tokenized cash solution for margin and collateral workflows.
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