Project Agora: exploring tokenisation of cross-border payments

Updated 14 October 2025

Project Agorá is a ground-breaking initiative that aims to test the desirability, feasibility and viability of a multi-currency unified ledger for wholesale cross-border payments. It is based on a concept initially proposed by the BIS.

Cross-border payments today are fraught with challenges that make them slow, expensive, and opaque. Businesses and banks must often navigate complex correspondent banking networks, which can delay transactions, increase costs, and obscure the payment process. These inefficiencies also tie up liquidity, making it harder for companies and financial institutions to manage their cash flow effectively. This creates a significant burden for global trade and finance, limiting innovation and growth.

Agorá is tackling this problem by exploring a new way to process wholesale cross-border payments using tokenisation and other cutting-edge technologies such as smart contracts. The project goal is to design a system that is faster, more transparent, and more accessible than the current model.

By tokenising – creating digital representations of commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves – Project Agorá seeks to explore and enable secure and verifiable transactions. In turn, a Project Agora-type solution could more effectively support the intermediation of credit and the facilitation of payments, which sustains the economy through final settlement by central banks. Settlement using central bank money (the safest and most liquid settlement asset) is crucial for a stable financial system as it eliminates credit risk. This ensures the finality of transactions, prevents systemic risk from counterparty failure, and supports monetary policy effectiveness and public confidence in the currency.

The approaches foreseen in Project Agorá could open new possibilities for businesses, such as conditional or always-on payments, while maintaining the safety, reliability, and soundness of banking payments.

What makes Agorá truly unique is its combination of innovation and global collaboration at scale. It brings together seven central banks, including those of five major reserve currencies, and over 40 leading financial institutions in a public-private partnership. This diverse group is united in testing the feasibility of a unified ledger – a programmable platform that uses tokenised money to streamline international payments.

Unlike incremental improvements to existing systems, the capabilities being explored and prototyped have the potential to fundamentally transform how cross-border payments are conducted. By enabling atomic transactions – payments completed synchronously and in full – and preserving the critical relationships between depositors and banks, Agorá is charting a path that balances innovation with trust and reliability.

In addition to its technical innovations, Project Agorá is addressing critical regulatory and legal considerations. The project is examining how tokenised money can comply with existing rules on issues like settlement finality, anti-money laundering, and countering the financing of terrorism. By identifying potential gaps and challenges across multiple jurisdictions, Agorá is laying the groundwork for a regulated financial market infrastructure that could transform cross-border payments.

Project Agorá is not about building a finished product but rather a prototype to evaluate the potential of this new digital infrastructure.

An Agora-type solution could pave the way for a more efficient, inclusive, and transparent global payments system, providing valuable insights for future developments in financial technology.

Latest Project Information – Updated October 2025

The project team has made significant progress, moving from the design phase to the prototype building phase. This combined first phase is expected to conclude in the first half of 2026, when a report on the lessons learned will be published.

BIS Innovation Hub projects are experimental in nature and aim to explore and deliver public goods to the global central banking community.