BOK: "Project Agora Operates Stably Even in Near-Live Environments"

17 Scenarios Covering Multiple Currencies

Bank of Korea Conducts Interbank Won Transfer with Nonghyup and Shinhan Banks

The Bank of Korea announced on July 30 that the core features and work processes of Project Agora were found to operate stably in a near-live environment based on results from the real-transaction test.

Project Agora is a global initiative aimed at enhancing the efficiency of cross-border payments and settlements by utilizing tokenized central bank reserves and bank deposits. The Bank of Korea, along with the central banks of major countries and 28 private financial institutions, participated in the Agora platform (prototype) real-transaction test conducted this month.

This test was conducted with institutions that expressed a willingness to participate and covered a variety of currencies, including the Korean won, US dollar, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc.

The test scenarios included 17 different cases, ranging from single-currency transactions (interbank, intercorporate, and within the same financial group) to dual-currency transactions (interbank and intercorporate), as well as payment-versus-payment (PvP) simultaneous foreign exchange settlement.

The Bank of Korea conducted a test of interbank transfers using tokenized reserves (worth 20 million won) in cooperation with NH Nonghyup Bank and Shinhan Bank. Upon receiving payment instructions from Nonghyup Bank and Shinhan Bank, the Bank of Korea issued, transferred, and redeemed the tokenized reserves via the Agora platform.

During this process, the Hangang Platform, which is part of the Bank of Korea’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) proof-of-concept known as Project Hangang, as well as the BOK-Wire+ real-time gross settlement system, were manually integrated.

Going forward, Project Agora plans to identify additional transaction types and scenarios that were not covered in this test and conduct further real-transaction testing. Institutions that did not join the current test but are participating organizations in Project Agora may also participate if they wish.

An official from the Bank of Korea said, “We plan to continue taking an active role in Project Agora and will consider various approaches to linking and ensuring interoperability between the Hangang Platform and the Agora Platform.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.