The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) together with seven central banks has announced plans to join forces with the private sector to explore how tokenisation can enhance the functioning of the monetary system with particular focus on cross-border payments.
Project Agorá (Greek for “marketplace”) brings together seven central banks: Bank of France (representing the Eurosystem), Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
They will seek to work in partnership with a large group of private financial firms convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
The project builds on the unified ledger concept proposed by the BIS and will investigate how tokenised commercial bank deposits can be seamlessly integrated with tokenised wholesale central bank money in a public-private programmable core financial platform.
This could enhance the functioning of the monetary system and provide new solutions using smart contracts and programmability, while maintaining its two-tier structure.
Smart contracts can enable new ways of settlement and unlock types of transactions that are not viable or practical today, in turn offering new opportunities to benefit businesses and people.
This major public-private partnership will seek to overcome several structural inefficiencies in how payments happen today, especially across borders, which add a layer of challenges: different legal, regulatory and technical requirements, operating hours and time zones.
Plus the increased complexity of carrying out financial integrity controls (e.g. against money laundering and customer verification), which are often repeated several times for the same transaction, depending on the number of intermediaries involved.
“Today, numerous payment systems, accounting ledgers and data registries require other complex systems to integrate them,” comments Cecilia Skingsley, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub.
“In Project Agorá, we want to explore a new common payment infrastructure that could bring all these elements together and might make the system work more efficiently together on a digital core financial infrastructure.
We will not just test the technology, we will test it within the specific operational, regulatory and legal conditions of the participating currencies, together with financial companies operating in them.”
Next steps
The BIS will issue a call for expressions of interest to private financial institutions to join Project Agorá. The IIF will act as the intermediary and convener of private sector participants.
It is envisaged that several regulated financial institutions will participate representing each of the seven currencies. Specific instructions and requirements will be issued in due course. Being a member of the IIF is not a requirement to participate.
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