TL;DR:
- The Project Agorá prototype involves more than 40 private financial institutions and will add the Bank of Canada as its eighth participating central bank.
- Legal analysis determined that settlement finality is achievable across the consortium’s initial seven jurisdictions.
- The Bank for International Settlements presented the results in an official report published this Wednesday.
For the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), tokenization could transform wholesale cross-border payments as we know them, according to the results of its latest operational prototype. With this initiative, they aim to resolve the inefficiencies of traditional payments.
Project Agorá, developed alongside the Institute of International Finance, addresses settlement delays, counterparty risk, and operational friction in multi-currency transactions. The prototype utilized a layered architecture that allows central banks to retain operational autonomy while interacting through a shared interoperable platform. Atomic settlement, defined as an “all-or-nothing” execution in transaction chains, is viable across multiple currencies and jurisdictions.
Regulatory progress and data privacy
The legal analysis concluded that settlement finality can be achieved across all seven participating jurisdictions. However, organizational data indicates that further technical and contractual work is required, aligned with national legal frameworks.
The privacy of financial data represents another core focus of the research. The BIS reported that this can be protected at both balance and transaction levels through technologies that shield sensitive data without breaching current regulatory compliance.
According to the report, the modular design has the potential to unlock capabilities such as conditional and always-on payments. These technical features would facilitate future enhancements in fraud detection and international sanctions compliance as data-sharing frameworks evolve.
Project Agorá initially involved the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, and the Swiss National Bank. Project participants will soon advance to real-value testing using selected currencies, a milestone that will include an expanded role for the private sector.
