Today Lloyds Banking Group confirmed it participated in three live tokenized deposit transactions via Project Agorá, a BIS initiative exploring how tokenization can improve wholesale cross border payments. The transactions used real money rather than simulations, marking the first confirmed activity in the project’s Real-Value Testing phase. In May the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) unveiled a prototype used for simulations with seven central banks and more than 40 institutions involved alongside the Institute of International Finance (IIF). The Bank of Canada was also announced as the eighth central bank.
One of the live transactions involved Lloyds’ Corporate Markets division converting Swiss francs into pounds, with Lloyds enabling the sterling leg. The bank emphasized that a key benefit was that several sequential steps in a normal payment were instead executed simultaneously, including FX conversion, payment and settlement, making cross border payments more efficient. It was also involved as a customer bank in two other transactions involving euros and Swiss francs.
“Moving from prototypes to live transactions is an important step in understanding how tokenised deposits could work in real payment scenarios,” said Peter Left, Head of Digital & Markets Innovation at Lloyds Banking Group. “It gives us valuable practical insight into how tokenisation could help reduce friction and settlement risk in wholesale payments, while operating within the regulated banking system.”
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