Bank of Korea completes real-value test for tokenized cross-border payments

The Bank of Korea said Thursday it successfully completed a real-value test of the Project Agora platform, confirming that its core functions can operate stably in an environment similar to actual operations. The central bank executed a 20 million won interbank transfer of tokenized reserves with NongHyup Bank and Shinhan Bank, manually linking the domestic Han River Platform with the BOK-Wire+ network during the process.

The test involved 28 institutions, including central banks and private financial firms, who processed approximately 800,000 Swiss francs worth of transactions across 17 scenarios. These trials covered single-currency transfers between banks and corporations, dual-currency trades, and payment-versus-payment settlements using tokenized central bank reserves and deposits.

Participants noted that the prototype achieved an average settlement time of one minute and 20 seconds from initiation to finality, despite not being fully integrated with existing real-time gross settlement systems. The Bank of Korea highlighted that the results confirmed substantial benefits in speed and transparency offered by tokenization and atomic settlement.

"The RVT demonstrated that the prototype can successfully handle various cross-border payment use cases, including interbank and corporate transfers," the central bank said in a statement. "We also highly evaluated the end-to-end visibility of payment status and the ability to process corporate transactions directly on the platform."

Following this verification, the Bank of Korea plans to conduct additional tests covering transaction types not included in this round, with participation open to other interested institutions. The central bank will also explore methods to link the domestic Han River Platform with the global Agora ledger.