Three central banks test linking ordinary payments with tokenised money

What the central banks tested

The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand said they completed a joint test of cross-currency settlement between conventional payment infrastructure and platforms that use tokenised money. The three regulators published the results of the experiment, called Project Meridian FX APAC, on 13 November 2026.

Tokenised money is a digital representation of a currency, such as a deposit or central bank liability, issued on a shared record rather than held only in a bank's own books. The project looked at whether a payment made through existing systems could be settled in step with one made on such a platform.

No single ledger required

According to the regulators, the experiment showed that synchronising the two sides of a foreign-exchange transaction does not require converting every payment to one common ledger. The test instead linked the traditional infrastructure and the tokenised platforms so that the two legs of a trade could settle together.

The central banks described the outcome as successful. They did not say in the published account when, or whether, the approach would be used in live payments, and none of the three announced a production launch.

What is still open

The regulators' statement covers the technical result of the trial. It leaves open how such linked settlement would be governed across the three jurisdictions, and which institutions would operate it. The Bank of England, MAS and the Bank of Thailand have not said what the next stage of the project will be.