Wholesale experiments programme

Overview 

In 2025, the Bank of England launched a programme of wholesale experiments, testing the relative merits of different methods of central bank money settlement for innovative payment systems. These experiments span a range of technologies, transaction types and asset classes, including tokenisation, FX and securities. Alongside our other UK-based and international initiatives, our experiments programme is aimed at identifying how our settlement services can evolve to enhance how we support tokenised wholesale markets. 

Why do we experiment? 
This work allows us to better understand how emerging technologies and new forms of financial infrastructure could shape the future of payments and settlement. Through practical, hands-on experiments – often in collaboration with industry and international partners – the Bank tests how innovations such as distributed ledger technology (DLT), tokenisation and synchronised settlement can deliver innovative functionality. They help inform the design of future infrastructure, identify risks and benefits of new technologies, and support the development of robust regulation and policy frameworks. You can see our programme of experiments below. 

The wholesale experiments team comprises of payments policy experts working alongside a DLT Lab of technologists and academics. This blend of expertise supports the Bank in designing and delivering experiments grounded in the real-world issues facing wholesale markets today and the benefits promised by the innovative technologies of the future. 

Project Agorá 

Project Agorá is a large-scale public-private collaboration exploring how tokenisation and programmability could transform wholesale cross-border payments.  

The project developed a prototype based on a unified ledger concept, combining tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves to allow for atomic, multi-currency settlement across jurisdictions. The prototype demonstrated that such an architecture can improve the speed, transparency and safety of cross-border payments, while preserving the existing correspondent banking model. It also showed that tokenisation can enable new capabilities, including conditional payments and improved co-ordination between participants, without changing the legal nature of money.  

The Bank is looking forward supporting the next phase of the project, which will explore how the prototype can be developed further to enhance real-world cross-border payments. 

DLT Innovation Challenge 

The DLT Innovation Challenge was a joint initiative between the Bank and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub London Centre. Its objective was to explore how we could apply distributed ledger technology to wholesale payments and settlement.  

It focused on four key themes:  

1. Settlement finality and security 
2. Scalability 
3. Network and asset control 
4. Interoperability with other DLT platforms and non‑DLT systems 

The challenge provided practical insights on the design of DLT platforms and how different design choices affect their usefulness for financial market participants as well as important public policy priorities. This contributes to policy work around use of DLT in the private sector to tokenise money and assets, as well as to the Bank’s work on how to support settlement of tokenised wholesale transactions in central bank money. You can read about these insights in the DLT Innovation Challenge final report. 

Initiatives such as this and Project Agorá have explored the long-term potential of tokenisation if adopted across the payment lifecycle. In parallel, we have also been exploring the concept of synchronisation as a practical means of realising these benefits in the near term through our Project Meridian experiments. 

Project Meridian series 

The Bank has undertaken a series of experiments, both independently and in collaboration with the BIS Innovation Hub. These have been the first steps in our journey in developing a synchronisation capability for the renewed RTGS service (RT2). 

Synchronisation supports atomic settlement in central bank money, allowing the controlled movement of funds between RT2 accounts, conditional upon movements of assets on external ledgers. We set out to assess the feasibility of the synchronisation concept through our Meridian experiments, which explored different ledger infrastructures and tokenised asset use cases, including housing, FX and securities settlement.
 

Project Meridian

Project Meridian was our first exploration of the synchronisation concept, completed with the BIS Innovation Hub London Centre. It explored how we could deliver synchronised settlement in central bank money through the introduction of a synchronisation operator (SO) within RTGS. It used a housing transaction use case to test how funds and assets could move conditionally and simultaneously, demonstrating a model for ‘atomic’ settlement. The experiment developed a DLT-based prototype capable of orchestrating changes in fund ownership alongside asset transfers. This work laid the conceptual and technical foundations for subsequent experiments in the Meridian series and the Bank’s wider synchronisation capability development. 

Project Meridian FX 

Project Meridian FX took the synchronisation concept further. Having assessed synchronisation’s ability to connect to tokenised asset ledgers, Meridian FX explored how it could link RT2 with wholesale settlement systems operated by other central banks. It explored whether synchronisation could be extended to cross-border, multi-currency environments, focusing on payment-versus-payment (PvP) foreign exchange transactions. The experiment demonstrated that a synchronisation operator can co-ordinate settlement across multiple ledgers and technologies while ensuring simultaneous exchange of currencies. It focused on connecting an emulated UK RTGS system, with three experimental interoperability solutions from the Eurosystem. 

While Meridian FX proved the technical feasibility of using synchronisation for cross-border transactions, the reality of implementing enhancements like these across jurisdictions is far more challenging. Real payment systems are often more complex, and there are significant legal and regulatory hurdles to overcome. 

For this reason, the Bank has partnered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand to explore policy and technical questions related synchronised FX settlement across the three jurisdictions. This work tests how highly diverse and differentiated central bank infrastructures can interoperate with each other to enable real-time, conditional settlement of FX transactions. The project looks to build on the original Meridian FX experiment, by testing in more realistic conditions and exploring some of the policy considerations required to deliver a live synchronisation service for FX.  

Project Meridian Securities 

Project Meridian Securities examined how synchronisation could support settlement of tokenised securities in central bank money. The experiment focused on how a synchronisation operator could bridge traditional RTGS systems with tokenised securities platforms, enabling delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement. It demonstrated a DLT-based prototype capable of coordinating securities settlement and related activities such as intraday repo in central bank money. The work also explored automated liquidity management across platforms, highlighting the potential for more efficient and integrated capital market infrastructures. This experiment broadens the application of synchronisation beyond payments into securities and collateral use cases, which are key to industry today.  

These experiments, alongside co-creation with industry, and ongoing policy and design work have built our conviction that synchronisation can deliver real benefits in the near-term. We are now progressing towards delivery of a live synchronisation capability, targeted for 2028, by running a Synchronisation Lab in 2026 for prospective synchronisation operators to demonstrate further use cases and understand business models. Experimentation will continue to shape the development of the synchronisation service, whilst uncovering additional enhancements to our wholesale infrastructure that go beyond what synchronisation can deliver.

What’s next? 

The Bank has several ongoing experimental initiatives, including our collaboration with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand, our involvement in Project Agorá, and our work to develop our own internal experimentation capability. These experiments, alongside the ones we have completed already, continue to build our understanding of how we can most effectively support the settlement of tokenised assets. 

In 2027, the Bank will publish a summary report of our learnings across our wholesale experimentation programme as well as other UK-based and international initiatives and identify how our settlement services can evolve to further support tokenised wholesale settlement.