Successful testing of a cross-border settlement platform based on tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits was completed as part of Project Agorá.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced the successful completion of the Real Value Testing (RVT) phase of Project Agorá. During the trial, participants tested cross-border payments on a shared, multi-currency programmable platform. The testing confirmed that settlements can be executed using tokenized central bank reserves and tokenized commercial bank deposits.
The trial took place in July 2026 in a controlled environment using real funds. It involved 28 financial institutions and central banks from Asia, Europe, and North America. Participants completed 17 settlement scenarios across multiple currencies with a total value of about CHF 800,000 (about $1 million). Individual transactions ranged from CHF 9,000 to CHF 125,000, or equivalent amounts in other currencies.
Project Agorá is a joint initiative of the BIS and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), launched in 2024 with the participation of 8 central banks, including the issuers of the world’s 5 major reserve currencies, as well as more than 40 financial institutions. The project is exploring the feasibility of a shared programmable platform that enables atomic, multi-currency cross-border settlements using tokenized central bank reserves and tokenized commercial bank deposits.
According to the BIS, the platform also demonstrated the use of smart contracts to automate payment execution, embed compliance checks, and enable conditional payments. This approach could reduce reconciliation workloads, manual processing, and other factors that currently cause delays, higher costs, and errors in cross-border settlements.
In addition to the technical aspects of the project, participants are assessing whether the model complies with existing anti-money laundering (AML), countering the financing of terrorism (CFT), and data protection requirements.
The BIS said Project Agorá remains a research initiative rather than a production-ready payment system. The next phase will expand the testing program to include additional transactions using real funds. The testing will continue with support from participating central banks and broader involvement from private-sector financial institutions.
In April 2026, the BIS and the IIF reported the first successful results from testing the Project Agorá blockchain platform for international payments.
