The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published results showing that Project Agorá, the initiative exploring how tokenization can improve wholesale cross border payments, has moved beyond simulations and processed real money for the first time. Twenty two financial institutions and five central banks completed 30 transactions worth roughly CHF 800,000 ($984,000) across six currencies, with the tokens backed by actual central bank reserves and tokenized deposits. Lloyds Banking Group separately confirmed its involvement in three of them.
This phase follows the prototype unveiled in May. The project remains experimental with no commitment to move into production. Average time from initiation to settlement was around 80 seconds, even though the platform was not connected to central bank settlement systems or banks’ core banking systems.
The currencies were the Swiss franc, euro, sterling, yen, won and dollar, with the dollar the only one whose central bank did not take part in the live tests.
The central banks that took part were the Bank of England, the Bank of France (for the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea and the Swiss National Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one of the more notable participants during the prototype phase, was not among them. Neither was the Bank of Mexico, and the Bank of Canada joined too late to be involved.
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