Lloyds Banking Group Powers Seamless Cross-Border Payments with Tokenisation

Lloyds Banking Group has made significant strides in tokenisation technology through Project Agorá, a global initiative exploring how tokenisation can improve wholesale cross-border payments.

The group completed three live tokenised deposit transactions as part of Real-Value Testing, demonstrating the potential for seamless and efficient cross-border payments. These transactions tested the use of tokenised commercial bank deposits in practical payment scenarios across Swiss francs, euros, and sterling.

In one transaction, Lloyds converted Swiss francs into sterling, linking the currency conversion, payment, and settlement stages together to demonstrate a more streamlined process. This is particularly significant for cross-border payments, which are typically processed across multiple systems and institutions, with separate steps for payment, currency conversion, and settlement.

Lloyds' participation in Project Agorá builds on its work in testing digital finance in regulated markets. The group has a history of innovation in this area, having worked on UK-first use cases for tokenised money market fund units and tokenised UK gilts as collateral for foreign exchange trades.