BIS Expands Development of Unified Ledger for Cross-Border Payments

Project Agorá, initiated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), entered the design phase. Over 40 private sector financial organizations joined the development of a unified programmable platform to integrate tokenized commercial bank deposits and wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

The BIS announced the expansion of Project Agorá launched in early 2024 in collaboration with seven central banks. The initiative entered the design phase, with 41 private sector companies selected by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) to participate.

Among the new participants in Project Agorá are:

• payment giants Visa, Mastercard, and SWIFT;
• the world’s largest banks Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, BNY, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation;
• financial conglomerates Citi, Deutsche Bank AG, Groupe BPCE, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and UBS;
• SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), Monex Group, and many others.

The full list of new participants is published on the BIS website. The firms were selected on the basis of strict criteria, the most important of which are

• regulating activities in one of the jurisdictions;
• participation in the processing of cross-border payments;
• availability of innovative experience.

The main objective of Project Agorá is to address existing structural problems in cross-border payments. Particular attention will be paid to issues such as customer verification and AML compliance. The initiative will design a unified ledger structure that integrates tokenized commercial deposits with wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDC). A unified platform is expected to reduce the number of intermediaries, streamline transactions, and speed up execution.

Project Agorá is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

Project Agorá was launched in April 2024 with the participation of the central banks of France, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, Mexico, England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.