BIS Innovation Hub

The BIS Innovation Hub combines technological research with practical development and cooperation among central bank experts. European teams work through the Eurosystem Centre in Frankfurt and Paris, the Swiss Centre in Basel and Zurich, the London Centre and the Nordic Centre in Stockholm. Other teams operate in Hong Kong SAR, Singapore and Toronto.

The international structure allows participating central banks to investigate shared problems across jurisdictions. Project outputs can include prototype software, technical reports and lessons for subsequent experiments. Banks evaluating a project should distinguish the research objective from the legal and operational conditions needed for deployment.

Project Agorá explores wholesale cross-border payments using tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves on a shared programmable platform. The prototype examines whether these forms of money can support atomic settlement across currencies and jurisdictions. The work also addresses legal questions such as settlement finality and compliance requirements.

The Project Agorá experiment included controlled real-value testing in July 2026, involving participating financial institutions and central banks. Those transactions tested the prototype under defined operational, technical and legal arrangements.

Project Nexus developed a model for linking domestic instant payment systems through standardized connections. Payment-system operators can investigate this approach as an alternative to building separate bilateral connections for each destination. The BIS work produced a prototype and a blueprint covering technology, governance and the operating scheme.

The BIS handed Nexus over to Nexus Global Payments, established by participating central banks in 2025 to pursue live implementation. That transfer separates the completed BIS Innovation Hub project from subsequent implementation work. Current participation and service availability therefore need to be checked with the institutions operating the scheme.

The BIS Innovation Hub, Swiss National Bank and SIX investigated settlement of tokenized assets in central bank money through the earlier Project Helvetia experiments. The work examined wholesale CBDC and integration with existing banking processes. The BIS Innovation Hub experiment is concluded and differs from the subsequent Swiss National Bank pilot.

The current Project Helvetia continues under the Swiss National Bank, whose pilot runs until at least June 2028. The Swiss National Bank pilot framework includes settlement of tokenized assets using central bank money.

Project Leap tested how post-quantum cryptography could protect financial communications and payment systems. The first phase used a hybrid approach combining traditional and quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. The second phase replaced traditional digital signatures with post-quantum alternatives while testing liquidity transfers in an operational payment system.

The experiments identified feasibility alongside performance effects that matter when planning a migration. Financial institutions evaluating post-quantum cryptography in finance need to examine component compatibility and processing requirements.

Project AISE is a technical proof of concept exploring responsible AI use in supervisory analytics. The project works with synthetic data and retail payment supervision use cases. The comparisons include knowledge graphs, deterministic analysis and constrained model-based synthesis under common test conditions.

The proposed architecture examines whether AI-assisted outputs can remain traceable to evidence and subject to structured human review. Supervisory teams can use those questions when designing experiments around confidential information.

Project mBridge explored a shared multi-central bank digital currency platform for cross-border payments. The BIS handed the project to the participating partners in October 2024 after the minimum viable product stage. The completed BIS project should be distinguished from any subsequent work conducted by those partners.

Financial-sector teams should establish who currently owns a project and which conditions were actually tested. A prototype, controlled real-value exercise and generally available service each answer different operational questions. Implementation planning should examine integration responsibilities and governance alongside the technology itself.