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Central bank money

Project Agorá completes real-value testing with 28 institutions

GlobalSource: Bank for International Settlements

  • The BIS says Project Agorá conducted real-value testing (RVT) in July 2026: 28 financial institutions and central banks completed transactions totalling about CHF 800,000 in CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, KRW and USD, across 17 scenarios and 30 transactions using tokenised central bank reserves and tokenised commercial bank deposits.
  • KRW transactions totalled KRW 120 million, with the Bank of Korea among five testing central banks and Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, NongHyup Bank, Shinhan Bank and Woori Bank among the testing financial institutions.
  • Average time from payment initiation to settlement was about 80 seconds even though the prototype was not integrated with RTGS and core banking systems.

Why it matters

Five Korean commercial banks have now moved real KRW value as tokenised deposits against tokenised Bank of Korea reserves on a shared multi-currency platform, giving them operational experience with ISO 20022-linked atomic cross-border settlement ahead of any production build.

Read the original: Bank for International Settlements ↗

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More detail

Who is affected

Testing central banks (Bank of England, Bank of France for the Eurosystem, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Swiss National Bank) and testing financial institutions including Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, NongHyup Bank, Shinhan Bank and Woori Bank.

Key dates

  • Real-value testing conducted during July 2026

What remains uncertain

  • The BIS project page gives no publication date for the RVT results (its 'Last updated' stamp reads 27 May 2026); the item is dated to the BIS announcement of completed testing on 30 July 2026.
  • The BIS says Project Agorá is not about building a finished product; no production timeline is given.

Key facts

Event
Pilot
Jurisdiction
Global
Source
Bank for International Settlements
Source tier
Tier 1 · Regulator / central bank
Product
Tokenized deposits
How we verified this

The source says

“Twenty-eight financial institutions and central banks across Asia, Europe and North America completed transactions in a selection of currencies totalling approximately CHF 800,000.”

“Project Agorá conducted RVT in July 2026.”

“Testing central banks Bank of England, Bank of France (for the Eurosystem), Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Swiss National Bank”

Table 1, real value testing overview.

“Hana Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. KB Kookmin Bank Lloyds Banking Group Mizuho Bank MUFG Bank Ltd NatWest Group NongHyup Bank PostFinance Ltd Shinhan Bank Standard Chartered Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation TD Bank N.A. UBS Woori Bank”

Table 1, testing financial institutions (excerpt).

“Transaction value by currency: EUR 29,000 JPY 86 million KRW 120 million”

Table 1 (excerpt).

“Despite the prototype not being integrated with existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and core banking systems, the average time from payment initiation to settlement was approximately 80 seconds.”

“As Project Agorá progresses, testing will continue.”

Verbatim from Bank for International Settlements, matched word for word against the live page on 31 October 2026.

Sources

Evidence

Confidence
High Primary source (regulator / official record); quote string-matched against the live page.
Quote verified
2026-10-31 20:01 UTC
Archived snapshot
SHA-256 1d6214659801a01c… · fetched 2026-10-30
Change log (1)
  1. 2026-10-30 Published

Full evidence record · How we label confidence

AI-assisted: the summary and analysis were drafted with AI from the primary source and checked by the editors. AI-drafted from the primary source; quote string-matched against the live source page.

Methodology · How we classify sources · Corrections · Report an error

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