Project Agorá marks a major milestone in wholesale cross-border payments innovation. With the release of its report and plans for further testing, the project demonstrates a path toward faster, more efficient cross-border wholesale payments and confirms that key technical and legal barriers are surmountable.
The prototype goes beyond a proof of concept. Developed iteratively and user-tested with participating institutions, it shows that multi-currency settlement with both tokenised central bank reserves and tokenised commercial bank deposits is achievable on a programmable ledger. Atomic settlement using tokenised reserves and tokenised deposits is technically attainable, and finality is legally achievable across multiple jurisdictions.
This work brings together the BIS, seven central banks, the IIF, and more than 40 financial institutions. The scale of that collaboration reflects the power of public-private innovation in advancing wholesale payment infrastructure. Project participants, including central banks, have expressed strong and sustained interest in further exploring the potential benefits, with future work expected to involve an enhanced role for the private sector.
Kaleido is proud to have been part of Project Agorá. We are excited to see how these breakthroughs and this work will shape the future of cross-border payments and money movement.
Read the full report here: https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/agora.htm
