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Project Agorá, launched by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a group of leading central banks, and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), will proceed to the next phase with more than 40 private sector financial firms in their exploration of how tokenization can enhance wholesale cross-border payments.
Project Agorá (Greek for "marketplace") is structured as a public-private collaboration. It 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, convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
They will work in partnership with a group of private financial firms, including Banco Santander, convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), who will act as the intermediary and convener of private sector participants. The BIS and the IIF selected a diverse set of firms from applicants that met the eligibility requirements and other criteria laid out in the public call for participation. The IIF has published the full list of private sector participants.
The project builds on the unified ledger concept proposed by the BIS and will investigate how tokenized commercial bank deposits can be seamlessly integrated with tokenized 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.
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.
Also among the challenges is the increased complexity of carrying out financial integrity controls (eg customer verification and anti-money laundering). These controls are often repeated several times for the same transaction, depending on the number of intermediaries involved.