BIS Innovation Hub Projects Compared: Dunbar, mBridge, Agorá, Nexus and More

What the Innovation Hub is

The BIS Innovation Hub is part of the Bank for International Settlements. Its projects page says they aim to develop technology public goods that improve the financial system and are experimental in nature. The Hub works through centres in several places: the Eurosystem, Hong Kong, London, New York, the Nordic region, Singapore, Switzerland and Toronto.

When we read the project list in October 2026, it counted 50 projects, of which 23 were concluded, 22 ongoing and 5 closed. The timeline below places the best-known ones on a single line; the pages for each project carry the exact documents.

The projects at a glance

Cross-border wholesale settlement: four projects

Dunbar (2021 to 2022) tested a shared platform for several central bank currencies, as two prototypes. Our Dunbar explainer covers it in full.

mBridge grew out of Inthanon-LionRock. Collaboration began in 2021 between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the UAE, the People’s Bank of China’s Digital Currency Institute and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, each running a validating node. A real-value pilot ran in 2022, the Saudi Central Bank joined in 2024, and the project reached a minimum viable product in mid-2024, compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The BIS announced in October 2024 that it was handing the project to its partners, and at that point listed 30 observing members, including the IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank and the New York Fed.

Agorá, organised with the Institute of International Finance, brought seven central banks together: the Bank of England, the New York Fed, the Banque de France (for the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico and the Swiss National Bank, with more than 40 private firms. The Bank of Canada has since joined. The prototype settles wholesale cross-border payments using tokenised central bank reserves and tokenised commercial bank deposits together. The May 2026 report says atomic settlement is achievable across currencies and jurisdictions, that a layered design lets central banks keep control of their own currencies, that privacy can be protected at balance and transaction level, and that tokenisation does not change the legal status of reserves or deposits. It also says more work is needed on technical, operational and contractual requirements, and that testing will advance towards real-value transactions.

Mariana tested trading and settlement of hypothetical euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss franc wholesale CBDCs between simulated institutions, using an automated market maker (a type of decentralised exchange) on a public blockchain with bridges between networks. It launched in November 2022 and concluded with a final report on 28 September 2023. The BIS notes it does not mean any partner plans to issue a wholesale CBDC or endorses decentralised finance.

Domestic wholesale CBDC: Helvetia

Project Helvetia, with the Swiss National Bank and the infrastructure operator SIX, asked how a central bank could offer settlement in its own money for tokenised assets. Phase I reported in December 2020 using test versions of the Swiss interbank payment system and SIX’s digital exchange. Phase II, reported in January 2022, added commercial banks and integrated wholesale CBDC into core banking systems.

Phase III was run by the Swiss National Bank on its own, piloting real Swiss franc wholesale CBDC from 1 December 2023 to 30 June 2024. The BIS page does not report its results, so for the outcome you should go to the SNB.

Linking instant payment systems: Nexus

Nexus tackles a different problem. Instead of building a separate link between every pair of countries’ instant payment systems, each operator connects once to a standard platform that reaches all the others. The BIS says this can enable cross-border payments within 60 seconds in most cases.

The Singapore Centre began the project in 2022 with Bank Indonesia, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand. A March 2023 prototype linked test systems from the Eurosystem, Malaysia and Singapore, and on 1 July 2024 the project delivered a governance framework, commercial model and technology blueprint. In 2025 the central banks of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand formed Nexus Global Payments, which took over the project.

Privacy in digital cash: Aurum 2.0

Aurum 2.0, from the Hong Kong Centre with the HKMA, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and ASTRI, explores how digital cash could give privacy comparable to physical cash while still supporting aims such as preventing financial crime. Its proof of concept combines encryption, BBS+ signatures, pseudonym-based ownership and zero-knowledge proofs, building on the two-tier design of the first Aurum project. The BIS lists it as ongoing, with its page updated on 13 October 2026.

How to read this list

A pattern is visible in the record: a project is built as an experiment, produces a report, and then either ends or is handed to a group of partners who carry it forward. That is why the status column matters more than the project name. “Concluded” means the BIS work finished, not that the idea failed, and not that it went live.

Two cautions. First, one project’s result is not another’s: Dunbar’s two prototypes, mBridge’s minimum viable product and Agorá’s prototype are different pieces of work with different partners. Second, the closest South African example, Project Khokha, was the Reserve Bank’s own project, not a BIS one, even though the same bank took part in Dunbar. For how banks are applying similar ideas commercially, see our HSBC explainer.