Project Agorá Tests Tokenised Deposits as Banks Weigh Alternatives to Stablecoins
Oct. 20, 2026 • Deep Dive • Digital Assets
Project Agorá completed a controlled real-value testing phase in late July 2026, processing approximately 800,000 Swiss francs across 30 live transactions in six currencies. The project records tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves on a shared programmable ledger, with an average initiation-to-settlement time of about 80 seconds. The Bank of Canada has joined as its eighth participating central bank, while commercial financial institutions are taking on deeper operational testing responsibilities.
Convened by the Bank for International Settlements and the Institute of International Finance, Agorá is examining a model for cross-border payments that preserves the roles of commercial and central bank money. BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos argued in August that stablecoins lack the institutional credibility and singleness of money needed for systemic settlement. The tests demonstrate live transactions, but conflicting participant counts and uncertainty about the US dollar settlement leg limit broader conclusions about the project’s results.
Project Agorá completed a controlled phase of real-value testing in late July 2026, processing approximately 800,000 Swiss francs ($990,000) through 30 live transactions across six currencies. The cross-border payments project uses tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves on a shared programmable ledger, with an average time of approximately 80 seconds from payment initiation to settlement.
The results offer a live test of an approach backed by central banks and commercial lenders as they assess how to make international payments faster without replacing regulated bank deposits with privately issued stablecoins. The Bank of Canada has joined Agorá as its eighth participating central bank, and commercial financial institutions are taking on deeper operational testing responsibilities.
What the live tests showed
The transactions covered Swiss francs, euros, British pounds, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars. Their total value and number make this a controlled test rather than evidence of performance at the volume of a production payments network. They do, however, move the project beyond a design exercise by testing transfers of real value.
Project Agorá is convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Institute of International Finance (IIF). It brings together eight central banks and more than 40 global commercial banks. Web3 infrastructure firm Kaleido develops and maintains the programmable ledger underlying the project.
The project reports an average initiation-to-settlement time of about 80 seconds. That measure covers the interval from starting a payment to completing its settlement; it does not, by itself, establish how the system would perform at a larger scale or under routine commercial conditions. The current results are best read as evidence of what the controlled testing environment achieved.
How tokenised bank money works
A tokenised deposit is a digital representation of money owed by a commercial bank to its customer. In Agorá’s design, such deposits sit alongside tokenised central bank reserves—the funds banks hold with central banks—on a shared programmable ledger. Smart contracts coordinate the different currency legs so they settle atomically: the linked parts of a payment complete together rather than leaving one side settled while another remains outstanding.
The architecture keeps commercial bank money distinct from central bank reserves. It also allows each central bank to retain sovereign domestic control over its own currency ledger while enabling the separate ledgers to coordinate multi-currency payments. This distinction matters because the project is not proposing that a single private issuer supply the money used for all settlement legs.
For banks, the design addresses the delays associated with correspondent banking chains while retaining deposits within the regulated banking system. The approximately 80-second average recorded in testing illustrates the intended improvement in payment speed, though the controlled transactions cannot establish how much time a future deployment would save for every payment route.
Why stablecoins remain part of the debate
The choice of tokenised deposits is also a choice about the structure of money. Commercial bank deposits are liabilities of regulated credit institutions and remain subject to banking capital and resolution regimes when tokenised. Privately issued stablecoins do not carry deposit insurance or direct access to central bank lender-of-last-resort facilities.
Keeping deposits within banks also matters to lenders’ funding. A broad shift from deposits into stablecoins could draw funding away from commercial banks and affect their lending capacity. Agorá’s model instead seeks faster cross-border transfers while preserving the two-tier monetary system, in which commercial banks provide deposit money and central banks provide the reserve money used for settlement between banks.
In August 2026, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos told the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium that stablecoins lack the institutional credibility and singleness of money required for systemic settlement. His argument positions tokenised deposits as a foundation for cross-border payments, rather than treating a faster digital transfer mechanism alone as sufficient. It is an institutional case for the model, not a finding that Agorá’s tests have resolved every operational question.
Questions the results leave open
Project reports differ on the number of organisations involved in the real-value testing scenarios. A BIS overview gives 28 financial institutions and central banks, while a technical breakdown lists 22 commercial financial institutions and five central banks, or 27 entities. Those counts should not be treated as interchangeable.
There is also a limit to what can be concluded about the US dollar leg. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York participated in the initial prototype design phase but did not execute live settlements during the July tests. The available information therefore does not establish that the dollar transactions settled against direct live central bank reserves rather than through commercial bank proxies.
Agorá’s next operational work falls more heavily to commercial financial institutions under its expanded testing mandate. Its controlled transactions show how tokenised bank money and coordinated ledgers can support live cross-currency settlement. The unresolved participation and dollar-settlement details remain important when judging how closely those tests represent a broader operating system.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.