Summary
Project Agorá — a BIS-convened collaboration of 8 central banks (Bank of England, FRBNY, Banque de France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Canada) and 40+ private financial institutions — has demonstrated atomic settlement of wholesale cross-border payments using tokenised central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits. The project will advance to real-value testing. 91% of central banks (85 of 93 surveyed) are exploring CBDCs.
Key Facts
- Project Agorá Phase 1: atomic multi-currency settlement proven in simulation; shared compliance screening demonstrated; privacy preservation confirmed
- Phase 2: real-value testing announced but no date or currency pair specified
- 3 live retail CBDCs: Bahamas (Sand Dollar), Jamaica (JAM-DEX), Nigeria (eNaira)
- 38% of AEs running wholesale CBDC pilots; 17% developing live wholesale CBDC
- Key driver: preserving role of central bank money amid stablecoin growth and asset tokenisation
- 45% of jurisdictions have enacted crypto regulation (up from 35% in 2023)
- BIS recommends central banks absorb stablecoin innovations (programmability, instant settlement) into their own frameworks
- Three competing wholesale cash layer initiatives: Fnality (UK), Partior (Singapore), Project Agorá (BIS)