Banks to participate in Australia’s tokenised asset settlement research

There will be 24 use cases explored in the project.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCC) have announced the chosen industry participants for its tokenised asset settlement research project.

ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), and Westpac are named amongst the lead use cases for Project Acacia.

The project aims to explore how different forms of digital money and associated infrastructure could support the development of Australia’s wholesale tokenised asset markets., the RBA and DFCRC said in a joint statement.

There will be 24 use cases in the project, of which 19 are pilot use cases involving real money and real asset transactions, and 5 are proof-of-concept use cases involving simulated transactions.

Testing of use cases will occur over the latter half of 2025, with a report on the findings from the project expected to be published in Q1 2026.

Other lead use case participants include the Australian Bond Exchange, the Australian Payments Plus, Canvas, Catena Digital, Fireblocks, Forte, Imperium Markets, Northern Trust, NotCentralized, ProspEx, and Zerocap.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) provided regulatory relief to participants to support and streamline the project.

ASIC’s relief will support the responsible testing of tokenised asset transactions, in some cases using CBDCs, between participants and a limited number of financial institutions in the coming months, the press release said.