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Project Agorá has completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale payments, settling about CHF 800,000, or $1 million, across 17 cross-border transaction scenarios.
The Bank for International Settlements initiative tested payments in six currencies, with transactions settling in about 80 seconds on average using tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits.
17 Payment Scenarios Covered Six Major Currencies
Twenty-eight private-sector institutions and central banks completed transactions ranging from CHF 9,000 to CHF 125,000 or their local-currency equivalents. The tests covered U.S. dollars, euros, British pounds, Japanese yen, Swiss francs and South Korean won.
Scenarios included corporate and interbank payments, single and dual-currency transfers, intragroup bank payments and payment-versus-payment transactions. JPMorgan, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and MUFG were among the participating banks alongside several central banks.
Transactions Settled in About 80 Seconds on Average
Project Agorá combines tokenized commercial bank deposits with tokenized central bank reserves. Transactions use atomic settlement, in which all legs of a payment complete together or none are executed.
Average settlement took about 80 seconds even though the prototype was not directly integrated with participating banks’ real-time gross settlement and core banking systems.
The tests used ISO 20022 payment and reporting standards to interact with existing banking processes. SIX coordinated transaction execution, while Kaleido provided technology support for the testing environment.
Project Agorá Remains Experimental After Real-Value Testing
Project Agorá began in 2024 to test whether tokenization could improve wholesale cross-border payments. Earlier work focused on a prototype combining commercial bank money and central bank money on a shared programmable platform.
The latest trials extended that work to transactions involving actual monetary claims under operational, legal and compliance procedures. Around 250 public and private-sector staff participated across payments, legal, risk, and compliance functions.
Project Agorá remains experimental rather than a production payment network. Testing will continue as participants assess how the model could connect with existing banking systems and operate across different regulatory frameworks.
