JPMorgan, Visa, and other financial firms join Project Agora, a blockchain-based project by Bank for International Settlements to overhaul cross-border payments
- Seven central banks from US, euro area, Japan also particiapte — Bank for International Settlements runs project with IIF
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Agora brings commercial firms into a BIS and IIF effort that also includes central banks from the US, euro area and Japan. That combination makes the project a coordination exercise between payment-network operators, banks and public authorities rather than a bank-only technology trial.
It extends a long-running pattern of bank-led distributed-ledger payment experiments, including JPMorgan's earlier blockchain payment network with ANZ and RBC and its platform effort with Temasek and DBS for payments, trade and FX settlement.
First-order effects
- JPMorgan, Visa and the other participating firms gain a seat in shaping a BIS-led approach to blockchain-based cross-border payments alongside the participating central banks.
- Project Agora broadens the set of operational perspectives available to the BIS and IIF, connecting bank and card-network requirements with public-sector payment objectives.
Second-order effects
- Other banks and payment providers may face pressure to engage with interoperable, institution-led settlement designs rather than pursue isolated blockchain pilots; JPMorgan's 2018 bank alliance for faster member payments illustrates the earlier consortium model.
- The project puts greater emphasis on how private payment infrastructure can operate within central-bank-led frameworks, potentially narrowing the design space for purely private cross-border networks.
Third-order effects
- If such public-private projects progress beyond experimentation, cross-border payments could evolve toward shared, programmable settlement rails governed jointly by regulated intermediaries and monetary authorities.
- The enduring tension will be between settlement programmability and public control: broader participation may improve interoperability, but it also makes governance and policy alignment central to adoption.
The trend: Cross-border payment modernization is shifting from standalone bank blockchain pilots toward public-private designs that pair programmable settlement with central-bank oversight.