The Bank for International Settlements' Project Agorá completed a real-value cross-border payment test, with 28 financial institutions and central banks settling approximately 800,000 Swiss francs across six currencies using tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits, averaging 80 seconds per transaction.
(Prior context: U.S., Japan, South Korea… Seven Central Banks Collaborate on Pilot for Cross-Border Settlement with Digital Currencies! BIS Launches Project Agora)
(Background supplement: Swift blockchain ledger ready: Citibank, HSBC, and 17 other banks pilot tokenized cross-border payments)
International Settlements Bank (BIS) announced on Thursday that Project Agorá has completed a real-value test of tokenized cross-border wholesale payments, with 28 financial institutions and central banks settling approximately 800,000 Swiss francs (about $1 million) across 17 transaction scenarios.
BIS in its official documentation stated that the test covered six currencies—Swiss franc, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Korean won, and US dollar—with an average settlement time of approximately 80 seconds, involving five central banks and eight major commercial banks.
28 participants: 5 central banks and 8 systemic banks
According to the list of participants published by the BIS, central banks include the Bank of England, Banque de France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, and the Swiss National Bank; commercial banks include JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole, UBS, Standard Chartered, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
This means that four of the world’s five largest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, and BNP Paribas—along with Asia’s largest financial group, Mitsubishi UFJ, are all participating, indicating that cross-border tokenized payments have entered the practical testing phase by major institutions.
The Agroá project tests from atomic settlement to real value.
Project Agorá is an initiative launched by the BIS in 2024 to explore how tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can improve cross-border wholesale payments. In May this year, the project confirmed that its prototype system achieved atomic settlement across multiple currencies and jurisdictions—that is, risk-free delivery via "settle all or settle none."
This July's test advanced further to the real-value stage, meaning actual funds are now being used to conduct cross-border settlements across live markets, rather than simulated trading.
How much faster is it compared to traditional SWIFT?
Traditional SWIFT cross-border payments typically take 1-3 business days, with the transition time through correspondent banks accounting for most of the delay. Project Agorá’s average settlement speed of 80 seconds compresses cross-border settlement from “day-level” to “minute-level.”
Notably, this test simultaneously utilized two types of assets: tokenized central bank reserves and tokenized commercial bank deposits. This means that future cross-border payments may not require CBDCs—tokenized commercial bank deposits can achieve the same result, and this pathway has relatively lower adoption costs since it does not require central banks to issue new digital currencies.
What about Taiwan?
Taiwan’s export-oriented economic structure means cross-border settlement is at the core of its daily financial infrastructure. Currently, Taiwanese banks still rely primarily on the SWIFT system for foreign exchange settlement, with intermediary bank fees and time costs remaining a longstanding pain point for SMEs making remittances.
If the test results of Project Agorá can be scaled to more cryptocurrencies, Taiwanese banks such as Taishin and Cathay could theoretically participate in a similar architecture through tokenized deposits, reducing cross-border New Taiwan Dollar remittance times from several days to just minutes, directly improving efficiency for Taiwan’s foreign trade industry.
