28 major global banks completed BIS-coordinated Agora pilot testing tokenized cross-border payments, settling transfers in ~80 seconds versus traditional systems.
Macro & Markets ·
A consortium of 28 major banks, including JPMorgan, Citi, and UBS, completed live testing of tokenized cross-border payments under Project Agorá, a pilot coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements. The test moved roughly $1 million across six currencies—the dollar, euro, pound, yen, Swiss franc, and Korean won—in around 30 transactions that settled in an average of 80 seconds, substantially faster than existing correspondent banking routes.
The trial employed tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits placed on a shared ledger, enabling all participating institutions to maintain a single record of ownership and transaction status rather than each holding separate records. The structure also permitted simultaneous foreign exchange settlement, mitigating counterparty risk by allowing both sides of a currency swap to execute together. Notably, the prototype operated alongside traditional payment infrastructure without requiring direct integration into banks' existing systems.
The pilot represents a step toward modernizing cross-border settlement infrastructure, though several questions remain unresolved. The test involved five central banks alongside the 28 commercial participants, but scalability, regulatory approval for production deployment, and integration timelines with live banking operations have not been disclosed.