The Bank for International Settlements has announced that its tokenization initiative, Project Agora, has completed its initial prototype testing phase involving atomic settlement and is now advancing to trials with real-value cross-border payments. This development was confirmed by the BIS on Wednesday, marking a significant milestone for the project.
Project Agora, a collaborative effort between seven central banks and over 40 financial institutions, successfully demonstrated that tokenized commercial bank deposits can be settled against tokenized central bank reserves on a unified platform, achieving finality across different jurisdictions. The prototype ensured that all legs of a cross-border transaction are executed simultaneously or not at all, a process known as atomic settlement. Participants reported that this design compresses traditional correspondent banking processes, which can take days, into mere seconds.
The project preserves the existing correspondent banking framework, sanctions screening, and SWIFT compatibility rather than replacing them. BIS Deputy General Manager Andrea Maechler emphasized that the system settles transactions in one go once all conditions are met. The Bank of Canada has now joined the initiative, further expanding its reach.
Participants include the Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bank of Japan, Banque de France, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Mexico, and Bank of Korea. The Institute of International Finance coordinates the private-sector involvement. IIF head Tim Adams stated that the project will benefit the entire financial system.
The prototype integrates smart contracts that allow banks to embed compliance checks, conditional payment triggers, and workflow logic directly into transactions. Efficiency gains include reduced reconciliation, fewer manual interventions, and lower operational risk. A legal analysis confirmed that settlement finality is achievable across all participating jurisdictions, with further work needed on technical and contractual requirements for each legal system.
The next phase will move beyond synthetic transfers to route actual money through the prototype, marking the first time a BIS Innovation Hub effort of this scale has advanced to live transactions. Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers noted that tokenization has the potential to make payments faster, cheaper, and more secure. This shift aligns with broader tokenization trends on Wall Street, with firms like DTCC, Nasdaq, and ICE developing blockchain-based systems for tokenized assets. Analysts have called 2026 a “tokenization supercycle,” with stablecoin supply and on-chain Treasury demand increasing.
A final report on Project Agora is expected in the first half of the year, with the mid-2026 update serving as the first checkpoint for assessing the scalability of real-value testing.