Project Agorá

Project Agorá is a public-private collaboration that aims to test the desirability, feasibility and viability of a multi-currency shared programmable platform for wholesale cross-border payments. It is based on a concept initially proposed by the BIS.

Cross-border payments today are burdened by structural inefficiencies that make them slow, costly and opaque. Complex, sequential processes and networks delay transactions, increase costs, limit end-to-end visibility and silo liquidity – complicating cash and treasury management. Together these frictions weigh on global trade and financial activity, constraining innovation and growth.

Project Agorá is tackling this problem by exploring a new way to process wholesale cross-border payments using tokenisation, making these payments faster, safer, and more transparent.

By tokenising – recording central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits on a shared platform – Project Agorá seeks to enable atomic settlement of wholesale cross-border transactions while preserving the safety, trust and reliability of the existing banking system.

In turn, a Project Agorá-like solution 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 Project Agorá truly unique is its combination of innovation and global collaboration at scale. It brings together eight central banks, including those of five major reserve currencies, and over 40 leading financial institutions - convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) - in a public-private partnership.