Two of Canada’s biggest banks are joining Project Agorá.
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Montreal both announced this week that they will participate in Project Agorá, a global public-private collaboration convened by the Bank for International Settlements and the Institute of International Finance to explore how tokenization and programmability could enhance wholesale cross-border payments.
The collaboration, which includes eight central banks and more than 40 regulated global financial institutions, will examine regulatory and legal considerations, including how tokenized central bank reserves can operate within existing requirements.
“We are excited to bring CIBC’s payments and digital assets expertise to Project Agorá and work with partners from around the world to help shape the future of cross-border payments,” stated Giorgia Anton, Managing Director and Head, Payments, CIBC Capital Markets.
“This global initiative is an opportunity to explore practical solutions that could make international transactions faster, more efficient, and more predictable, delivering greater speed, efficiency, and certainty for clients,” Anton remarked.
“Institutional clients increasingly need to move money securely across markets, currencies, and time zones without being constrained by traditional operating hours,” says Derek Vernon, Head, North American Treasury and Payment Solutions, BMO.
“By joining Project Agorá, BMO is bringing its payments expertise and work in tokenized deposits to a global collaboration focused on building faster, more efficient and resilient cross-border payment infrastructure,” Vernon said.
In a similar move, both banks also recently agreed to co-develop a Canadian dollar based digital money solutions alongside the National Bank of Canada, the Royal Bank of Canada, The Bank of Nova Scotia, and TD Bank.
The partnership orients around a “tokenized deposits initiative,” which will explore “tokenized deposit solutions to drive responsible innovation and facilitate broad participation in the digital money ecosystem for the benefit of all Canadians,” according to an official statement.
Earlier this year, all six banks joined the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, which emerged after years of research within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and academia as a “practical, multilateral solution that … helps ensure capital flows at the scale and speed required to support allied defence, security and resilience.”
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