In brief: BPCE gets involved in the Agora project

Last April, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) presented its project for the digitization of cross-border payments. Called the “Agora” project, it is to be based on a cooperative effort by central banks and other international financial players. And from now on, the project will also include BPCE.

Seven central banks (the Banque de France, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve) are cooperating on the Agora project.

More than 40 financial institutions and companies are currently working together to modernize cross-border payments through tokenization and digital deposit solutions.

Participating banks include BNP Paribas, Santander, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase, as well as market infrastructures such as Swift, Euroclear and SIX Digital Exchange, and major payment players such as Visa and Mastercard.

French bank BPCE will now also be taking part in the project. The group has announced that it has been selected to take part in experiments on the use of tokenization technology for cross-border payments.