BIS Project Agorá Shows Tokenized Payments Cut Settlement Risk

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released a report Wednesday on Project Agorá, an experimental prototype for cross-border wholesale payment.

The BIS said the report shows how seven central banks and more than 40 regulated financial institutions can settle cross-border wholesale payments in seconds once liquidity is locked, while reducing credit and settlement risk through atomic settlement using tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits.

The initiative marks one of the broadest collaborations yet between central banks and private lenders, exploring how tokenization could modernize global payments infrastructure.

The project, convened jointly by the BIS and the Institute of International Finance, targets the slow and costly nature of international transactions that continue to burden global trade and financial activity. Cross-border payments totaled $195 trillion in 2024 and are projected to reach $320 trillion by 2032, according to FXC Intelligence, cited in the report.

Project Agorá uses a two-layer blockchain architecture, combining tokenized central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers with tokenized commercial bank deposits on a shared unifying ledger, enabling so-called atomic settlement in which all balance updates occur simultaneously or not at all.

The BIS said the approach preserves the “two-tier banking system” and safeguards the “singleness of money,” which it called “fundamental to financial stability,” distinguishing the project from stablecoin alternatives.

The platform also allows institutions to conduct anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud screening in parallel rather than sequentially, which the BIS said could reduce the high false-positive rates that plague today’s cross-border payment system.

Related: BIS warns dollar stablecoins could strain banks and policy

Project Agorá moves to real-value testing

The project is advancing to real-value testing with actual transactions involving certain currencies and participants, though the BIS didn’t provide a timeline for implementation.

The report identified areas requiring further development, including liquidity saving mechanisms, cybersecurity posture and governance frameworks covering settlement finality, data governance and risk management.

Settlement occurs in seconds once funds are locked, and the platform is designed to operate around the clock, mitigating delays caused by misaligned operating hours across jurisdictions.

Wholesale cross-border payments today vs Project Agorá. Source: BIS

“The prototype also enhances transparency. All parties to a transaction have access to real-time payment status, while maintaining privacy from non-participating entities,” the BIS stated in the report, adding that, in the future, such visibility could be extended to end users, including debtors and creditors.

Participating central banks include the Banque de France representing the Eurosystem, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York via its New York Innovation Center and the Bank of England.

Earlier this month, the Bank of England proposed extending settlement hours for its RTGS and CHAPS systems as part of a broader push toward near-24/7 settlement.

Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden also said shared ledgers and tokenization could make payments and settlement faster and cheaper, with fewer intermediaries and shorter settlement windows.

Cointelegraph reached out to the BIS media team for comment on implementation timelines and governance plans, but had not received a response by publication.

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