The proponents of Project Agorá said Wednesday that they had successfully developed a system for using tokens to transfer large amounts of money in multiple currencies. Canada’s central bank missed out on that work, but it will participate in the testing phase. (The Logic) 

Talking point: The announcement marks Canada’s return to the vanguard of international efforts to keep pace with technological changes that are disrupting money and payments. The Bank of Canada was involved in early research that showed a central bank digital currency was feasible, then pulled back in 2024 when it appeared inevitable that Pierre Poilievre, a vocal critic of the idea, would become prime minister. Project Agorá is something else. Over two years, seven central banks and some 40 financial institutions—including TD’s U.S. unit—created a way to use tokenization to settle wholesale payments quickly and around the clock. Now, they need to see if it actually works.