BIS Launches Real-Money Blockchain Payment Trials with Major Banks
- The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is testing a blockchain-based system for cross-border payments with real money.
- Project Agorá involves seven central banks and over 40 regulated institutions, including JPMorgan, UBS Group, Deutsche Bank, Mastercard, and Visa.
- The project aims to enhance cross-border payment efficiency while maintaining existing compliance checks against sanctions violations and money laundering.
- A unified ledger model will allow tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle transfers across jurisdictions in seconds.
Project Agorá by the BIS seeks to modernize global banking infrastructure by reducing frictions in cross-border payments through tokenization. The initiative retains the correspondent banking system’s compliance tools while aiming for faster and more efficient transactions.
This trial could demonstrate how blockchain technology integrates into traditional finance systems, potentially reshaping future global settlements if successful. Source
