TD Touts Successful Tokenized Payments With Project Agorá

TD says it has successfully completed a tokenized payments test on the Project Agorá platform.

The test case involved carrying out a tokenized payment between TD New York Branch (TD Securities LLC) and TD Bank, N.A., in partnership with Bank of New York (BNY), the bank announced Monday (Aug. 31).

“The transaction was done as part of Project Agorá’s real-value testing with participating central banks and financial institutions testing payments across selected currencies and scenarios,” TD said in a news release.

Project Agorá, a public-private program convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Institute of International Finance, explores the tokenization of wholesale cross-border payments.

TD says the test shows the ability to issue tokenized money on the Agorá platform and facilitate the instant movement of money, with atomic settlement, between the two TD entities with BNY serving as the clearing bank/intermediary.

The bank called it a key milestone that illustrates the benefits of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based money movement and the feasibility of carrying out real-money transactions between entities using the Agorá platform.

“The work supports continued exploration of faster, more transparent and more efficient wholesale cross-border payments while maintaining the safety, reliability and integrity of the existing banking system,” the release added.

TD’s news follows a recent report on tokenization from the BIS. That report showed that real-value testing (RVT) of tokenization of wholesale cross-border payments showed an average time from payment initiation to settlement of about 80 seconds.

Project Agorá had carried out the RVT in a controlled environment in July.

Writing about the benefits and limits of tokenization earlier this month, PYMNTS argued that it cannot eliminate the institutional problem that has always been at the core of finance.

“Somebody must be trusted to define the rules, honor the liabilities and remain standing when markets stop behaving normally,” that report said.

All the same, “Waiting for Certainty: Why Most CFOs Are Holding Back on Crypto and Stablecoins,” the March installment of PYMNTS Intelligence’s 2026 Certainty Project, found that most middle-market companies are still cautious about digital assets. Usage remains limited, with 13% of companies using stablecoins and 5% using other forms of cryptocurrency.