- Central Banks, Commercial Lenders Step Up Push for 24/7 Cross-Border Payments
A group of leading central banks and more than 40 major commercial banks are stepping up testing of a major digital payments project aimed at making cross-border transactions faster, cheaper and potentially available around the clock.
The initiative, known as Project Agora, is being spearheaded by the Bank for International Settlements and involves the New York Federal Reserve, along with central banks from Europe, Korea, Mexico and Japan. These currencies account for a significant share of global payments, making the project one of the most closely watched attempts to modernise the international financial architecture.
Cross-border payments currently rely on a complex network of commercial banks and correspondent banking relationships. Transactions can be slow and expensive, particularly when multiple banks are involved or when payments include smaller emerging-market currencies.
The BIS and participating institutions are testing how tokenised central bank reserves can work alongside tokenised commercial bank deposits to improve the settlement of international payments.
BIS Deputy General Manager Andrea Maechler said the latest round of testing showed the ability to use digital forms of central bank money together with digital commercial bank deposits.
The project is not yet ready for live deployment, but further testing is planned, with the Bank of Canada expected to join the next phase.
“It is a clear recognition that if the world is going into a tokenized ecosystem, one of the advantages is to move towards 24/7,” Maechler said, referring to the prospect of an always-on global payments system.
The development comes as global authorities push to make international payments more efficient. The Group of 20 leading economies has made faster and cheaper cross-border payments a key priority, reflecting growing concern that the existing system is too costly, fragmented and slow for an increasingly digital global economy.
Project Agora is not viewed as a direct rival to other digital payments experiments, but it is often compared with mBridge, another high-profile project now led by China, alongside Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
India’s central bank has also proposed that BRICS countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, consider linking their digital currencies ahead of a BRICS summit it is due to host.
The comparison matters because global payments infrastructure is becoming a strategic frontier. Whoever shapes the next generation of settlement systems could influence liquidity flows, transaction costs, regulatory oversight and the future role of national currencies in international finance.
One of the key features tested under Project Agora is atomic settlement. This allows cross-border and cross-currency banking transactions to be completed on an all-or-nothing basis once required conditions are met. That could reduce settlement risk and improve confidence in complex international transactions.
The central banks have also tested a layered prototype architecture, which allows each monetary authority to retain control over its national currency ledger while preserving important legal and regulatory safeguards.
For emerging markets, the implications could be significant. Faster and cheaper cross-border payments could reduce friction in trade settlement, remittances, capital flows and regional financial integration.
For African economies, where cross-border payments remain expensive and fragmented, the direction of global experimentation is particularly important. While Project Agora is being driven largely by major advanced-economy central banks and large commercial lenders, its outcomes could eventually shape the standards that smaller markets must adapt to.
That raises a strategic question for countries such as Ghana: whether domestic payment systems, central bank digital policy frameworks and regional platforms will be ready to interface with the next generation of global settlement infrastructure.
The absence of China’s central bank and Chinese commercial banks from Project Agora also highlights the increasingly competitive nature of payments innovation. Different blocs may experiment with different models, creating both opportunities and risks for global interoperability.
Tim Adams, head of the Institute of International Finance, which helps coordinate the commercial banks involved, said the latest testing marked a milestone by demonstrating that tokenised payments could work at scale.
For now, Project Agora remains experimental. But the direction is clear: central banks and commercial lenders are preparing for a future in which international payments may no longer be limited by banking hours, correspondent banking delays or legacy settlement systems.
If successful, the project could mark a major step toward a 24/7 global payments architecture one that is faster, more programmable and potentially more competitive than the system that has dominated international finance for decades.
