BIS Project Agorá settles $1M in tokenized cross-border payments, because SWIFT could never 💸

The Bank for International Settlements said Project Agorá completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale cross-border payments, settling about 800,000 Swiss francs (around $1 million) across 17 transaction scenarios with 28 participating financial institutions and central banks. The tests, announced Thursday, used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle transactions in Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars, with the BIS reporting an average settlement time of roughly 80 seconds.

Participants included the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea and the Swiss National Bank, along with commercial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and MUFG. The BIS described the July trials as an important milestone in Project Agorá's multi-stage research program.

Project Agorá was launched in 2024 to examine how tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can improve cross-border wholesale payments. In May, the project reported that its prototype had demonstrated atomic settlement across multiple currencies and jurisdictions. The BIS said testing will continue as the initiative advances.