Project Agorá: central banks and banking sector embark on major project to explore tokenisation of cross-border payments

03 April 2024

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) together with seven central banks today announced plans to join forces with the private sector to explore how tokenisation can enhance the functioning of the monetary system.

Project Agorá (Greek for "marketplace") brings together seven central banks: Bank of France (representing the Eurosystem), Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They will seek to work in partnership with a large group of private financial firms convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF). 

The project builds on the unified ledger concept proposed by the BIS and will investigate how tokenised commercial bank deposits can be seamlessly integrated with tokenised wholesale central bank money in a public-private programmable core financial platform. This could enhance the functioning of the monetary system and provide new solutions using smart contracts and programmability, while maintaining its two-tier structure. ...

 more at BIS


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