Central banks and commercial banks have run their first real-money transactions on Project Agorá, the Bank for International Settlements’ flagship effort to tokenize wholesale cross-border payments. On July 30, 2026, the BIS published results showing 30 transactions settled with central bank money and tokenized bank deposits, taking about 80 seconds on average. Lloyds Banking Group and Spain’s CaixaBank were among the banks that carried them out. The test follows a prototype unveiled in May.
The BIS runs Agorá with the Institute of International Finance (IIF). This phase brought together five central banks (the Bank of England, the Banque de France, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, and the Swiss National Bank) and some 20 private financial institutions. The goal is to find out whether tokenization can remove the familiar frictions of cross-border payments: slow speeds, opaque fees, and long chains of correspondent banks.
Thirty transactions in six currencies
The real-value phase was deliberately small: 30 transactions worth about CHF 800,000 (close to $984,000), settled with actual central bank reserves and tokenized deposits. Lloyds took part in three of them, covering sterling, the euro, the Swiss franc, and a cross-currency flow. Across the whole test, the currencies were the Swiss franc, euro, sterling, yen, won, and dollar. The dollar was the only one whose central bank did not take part in this phase.
- Same-currency payments between banks, settled in tokenized deposits backed by central bank reserves.
- A cross-currency transaction that tied currency conversion, payment, and settlement into a single synchronized operation.
- Settlement carried out without any connection to central bank settlement systems or banks’ core banking systems. The test proved the mechanics, not production readiness.
Lloyds converts Swiss francs to sterling in one step
The centerpiece was a transaction run by Lloyds: a conversion of Swiss francs into sterling in which the FX trade, the payment, and the settlement happened simultaneously rather than as separate steps. In a traditional correspondent chain, those three steps follow one another over several hours or even days, and each one exposes the parties to counterparty risk. On Agorá, they execute as one. “Moving from prototypes to live transactions is an important step in understanding how tokenised deposits could work in real payment scenarios,” said Peter Left, head of digital and markets innovation at Lloyds Banking Group.
Banks bet on tokenized deposits against stablecoins
Agorá is part of a broader contest over what form digital money will take. On one side, private stablecoins (Tether, Circle, or consortia such as Open USD) offer a token backed by reserves, outside the traditional bank balance sheet. On the other, central banks and commercial banks champion the tokenized deposit, which keeps money inside the regulated banking system. Agorá’s bet is to offer the programmability that has made stablecoins successful without taking money outside the scope of prudential supervision.
| Criterion | Tokenized deposit | Stablecoin |
|---|---|---|
| Type of money | Commercial bank money | Claim on a private issuer |
| Issuer | The holder’s bank | Specialized company (licensed under MiCA, the GENIUS Act, etc.) |
| Framework | Existing banking regulation | Newer, crypto-specific framework |
| Cross-border settlement | Aims for atomic interbank settlement | Peer-to-peer token transfer |
No Fed, no production commitment
The BIS is open about the limits. Thirty transactions do not make an infrastructure, the test ran without any connection to central banks’ live systems, and without the Federal Reserve the exercise lacks the central bank behind the dominant currency in cross-border payments. The project remains experimental, with no commitment to move into production.
While card networks and fintechs bet on stablecoins to modernize cross-border payments, central banks are pushing their own option: digital money that remains regulated bank money. Agorá does not settle that debate yet, but it shows that multicurrency atomic settlement works with real money, the missing piece for a credible bank-led alternative. The next milestones to watch are more central banks joining, starting with the Fed, and, one day, a move from the lab to production.