The Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Project Agora brought together 28 global commercial banks in July to successfully complete around US$1 million in real cross-border transactions using tokenised money across six currencies.
Supported by seven central banks, participation in the pilot included top banks such as JPMorgan and Citi amongst many others. The pilot demonstrated that wholesale payments can settle in as little as 80 seconds through programmable, atomic settlement, offering a potential blueprint for making international payments faster, cheaper and available 24/7 without replacing the existing banking system. The six currencies used were US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Swiss Franc, and South Korean Won.
Why Project Agorá is different
Today’s cross-border payment system relies largely on correspondent banking, where transactions pass through multiple intermediaries before reaching their destination. Each step introduces delays, additional costs, fragmented liquidity and limited visibility over where funds are during settlement. According to BIS, these structural frictions continue to make international payments slower, more expensive and operationally complex than domestic transfers.
Project Agorá reflects a clear sign that tokenisation is moving beyond digital asset experimentation and into the architecture of the global banking system. Rather than testing cryptocurrencies or isolated blockchain applications, the initiative explores how commercial bank deposits and central bank money could operate together on a shared programmable platform to settle cross-border payments across multiple jurisdictions while remaining within existing regulatory frameworks.
While the prototype is not production-ready, it proved regulated tokenised money can work across jurisdictions without changing existing legal frameworks. BIS says future work is expected to involve an enhanced role for the private sector, supported by continued and active engagement from participating central banks.
How Wall Street’s biggest banks are approaching tokenisation
That said, it is worth taking a look at the initiatives set out by the largest five banks in America, who are approaching tokenisation less as a crypto experiment and more as an effort to modernise core financial infrastructure.
- JPMorgan has taken the most advanced wholesale banking approach through its Kinexys platform, which has expanded beyond JPM Coin into tokenised deposits, intraday liquidity management, repo transactions and cross-border payments. The bank is focused on redesigning transaction banking infrastructure rather than simply making payments faster.
- Citi is positioning tokenisation as a client-facing service spanning treasury, trade finance, payments and capital markets. Citi Token Services enables corporate clients to move liquidity around the clock using tokenised deposits and programmable payments, while the bank is also developing tokenised private market offerings for institutional and wealth clients.
- Meanwhile, Bank of America has prioritised interoperability over proprietary products. Its work on the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) explores how tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank money could settle across a shared ledger, with an emphasis on common standards that integrate with existing payment systems and regulation.
- Wells Fargo is preparing tokenised US dollar and British pound deposits for corporate clients, supporting 24/7 cross-border transfers, programmable payments and instant settlement on its blockchain platform. The system is also designed to connect with future industry tokenised deposit networks.
- BNY has taken a different role by focusing on the custody and servicing infrastructure behind tokenised markets. Rather than issuing tokenised money, it is investing in digital asset custody, tokenised money market funds and fund servicing capabilities that support the issuance, safekeeping and transfer of tokenised securities.
Tokenisation’s significance extends well beyond faster payments. By turning commercial bank deposits into programmable money, banks can automate treasury operations, enable conditional settlements and manage liquidity continuously rather than within traditional banking hours. Combined with tokenised securities and funds, this creates the possibility of atomic settlement, where cash and assets move simultaneously, reducing settlement risk and improving capital efficiency across financial markets.
Project Agorá suggests the industry’s biggest hurdle is no longer proving the technology. As major banks develop different tokenised deposit platforms and blockchain infrastructure, the harder question is whether those systems can operate under shared legal, regulatory and technical standards. That is why initiatives such as the Regulated Liability Network and Project Agorá have shifted the conversation from individual pilots to interoperability and governance.
The next phase of tokenisation will therefore be defined less by which bank launches the next platform and more by whether central banks and commercial banks can build a common framework for tokenised money to move securely across borders. If they succeed, tokenisation could become foundational infrastructure for global finance rather than another isolated digital banking innovation.
