The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has announced that Project Agorá—a joint initiative with seven central banks and over 40 private financial institutions—has moved beyond simulations and into real-value transaction tests. The project demonstrates that tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits can settle cross-border payments atomically, eliminating counterparty risk where one leg of a transfer fails.
In the current system, cross-border transfers pass through multiple intermediary banks, delaying settlement for days and adding operational reconciliation risks. Project Agorá uses tokenization and blockchain-style rails to complete settlement simultaneously across jurisdictions in a single “all-or-nothing” step. Participating central banks include the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and Swiss National Bank. The Bank of Canada joined the effort during the same week.
Launched in April 2024, the project spent about 18 months in design before entering a prototype stage in 2025. Active testing began in January 2026, described by the BIS as moving from concept to an operating system. The shift to real-value tests marks a significant milestone, as participants now plan to settle actual transactions using selected currencies and institutions.
Separately, the BIS warned that stablecoins and crypto exchange “earn” products expose users to unsecured repayment risk. It noted that exchanges operated as lightly regulated “shadow banks,” with rehypothecation of customer deposits into margin lending and proprietary trading leading to a $19 billion wipeout in 2025. These products function like unsecured loans, the BIS said, urging faster stablecoin regulation.
Outside Agorá, the BIS highlighted that financial market infrastructures—such as DTCC, Nasdaq, and Intercontinental Exchange—are building tokenized settlement systems for equities, ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries, expanding tokenization beyond payments.
