BIS Project Agorá Completes $1 Million in Real-Value Tokenized Payment Trials

The BIS said Thursday that Project Agorá has completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale cross-border payments, with 28 financial institutions and central banks settling roughly 800,000 Swiss francs, about $1 million, across 17 transaction scenarios.

The trials used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle payments in Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars. Settlements averaged around 80 seconds to complete, according to the BIS.

Major Central and Commercial Banks Take Part

Participants included the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea and the Swiss National Bank, alongside commercial lenders such as JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Standard Chartered and MUFG.

Part of a Broader Multi-Year Initiative

Project Agorá launched in 2024 to study how tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves could improve cross-border wholesale payments. In May, the project reported that its prototype had already demonstrated atomic settlement across multiple currencies and jurisdictions. The BIS described the July trials as an important milestone, with further testing planned as the project moves forward.