Overview
Wholesale tokenized payments use tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank tokenized-deposits on shared ledgers for institutional cross-border settlement — distinct from retail stablecoin rails.
Timeline
- 2026-07: project-agora RVT completes ~CHF 800k real-value settlement (~80s) (2026-07-31-bis-project-agora-tokenized-payments)
Key Players
- bis
- project-agora
- Major banks (JPMorgan, Citi, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered)
Analysis
Prototype proves atomic multi-currency settlement; production still needs RTGS integration and governance. Contrast with circle/usdc retail-regulated stablecoin path.