what happen?

  • The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has launched a blockchain project called "Agora" with the goal of creating a global cross-border payment system that allows investors to use digital currencies supported by central banks for cross-border transactions, and tokenized assets are on the platform. can also be bought and sold.

  • According to Bloomberg, financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Visa and Mastercard have all participated in this project.

  • After the Agora project is adopted, it will help to use blockchain technology to improve the transparency of cross-border payments, reduce costs, and accelerate capital flows.

What does the Agora project want to do?

Agora is a blockchain cross-border payment project launched by BIS. The list of participating private sector institutions includes 41 companies, and these companies will cooperate with 7 central banks in the United States, the Eurozone, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Agora's goal is to build an international platform that allows investors to use central bank digital currencies to buy and sell tokenized assets. This unified system will allow investors to trade in central bank currencies with virtually no risk in cross-border transactions.

Morten Bech, the head of the BIS project, said in an interview with Bloomberg that due to the large scale and widespread attention of the Agora project, it was decided to cooperate with the Institute of International Finance to more efficiently carry out the project. Complete the screening and onboarding process for private agency participants.

BIS is known as the "bank of central banks" because it can transfer funds between various central banks and financial institutions and is trusted by financial institutions around the world. The agency stated that Agora is currently BIS’s largest and most complex development project in terms of geographical scope and number of participants.

It is expected that by the end of 2025, BIS will release a report on the Agora project, describing the project prototype design in detail and explaining the testing process. In addition, the report analyzes the legal and regulatory issues related to tokenized currencies and central bank digital currencies in all participating countries.

What impact will it have on business and individual users?

The purpose of the Agora project is to solve the problems of slow speed and high cost in existing cross-border payments. Using blockchain technology and tokenized central bank digital currency, transactions can be conducted on a unified system to improve payment efficiency. This is particularly important for businesses, especially those that rely on international supply chains or frequently conduct cross-border transactions.

For ordinary people, international remittances and payments will also become faster, without the need to face delays that can last up to several days in traditional bank transfers.

According to a survey by foreign media "PYMNTS", the average handling fee for cross-border payments by consumers is 11%, while the handling fee for business-to-business payments is about 1.5%, and the processing time can even take several weeks. In addition, nearly 50% of Citibank's corporate customers pointed out that payment costs are too high, and 59% complained that the speed was too slow, and even processing failures often resulted in corporate losses.

The emergence of the Agora project helps to use blockchain technology to improve the transparency of cross-border payments, reduce costs, and accelerate capital flows. As the number of participating countries increases in the future, its influence will further expand and promote the standardization of global financial market infrastructure.

Source: Bloomberg, PYMNTS, Utoday

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