BIS Project Agorá shows tokenized payments can settle in seconds

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has concluded a two-year initiative known as Project Agorá, which successfully tested a prototype for cross-border wholesale payments involving seven central banks and over 40 private financial institutions. By utilizing a two-layer blockchain architecture, the project enables atomic settlement of tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits in seconds. This approach addresses the inefficiencies of the current global payment system, which processed $195 trillion in 2024 and is expected to reach $320 trillion by 2032. By integrating anti-money laundering and fraud screening in parallel, the system significantly reduces processing times and false-positive rates while maintaining the traditional two-tier banking structure. The prototype ensures financial stability by preserving the singleness of money, distinguishing it from decentralized stablecoin alternatives. As the project moves toward real-value testing, it highlights a major shift in how global financial infrastructure may adopt tokenization to modernize international trade. This collaboration represents one of the most significant efforts to date to harmonize central bank and private sector ledgers for 24/7 global liquidity.