TD announced it’s moved real USD funds between two domestic US entities for the first time using the Project Agorá platform. The test case involved executing a tokenized payment between TD New York Branch (TD Securities LLC) and TD Bank, N.A., in partnership with BNY.

The test demonstrated 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 as the clearing bank/intermediary. This is an important milestone highlighting the benefits of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based money movement and the feasibility of conducting real-money transactions between entities using the Agorá platform.

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. Project Agorá is a public-private initiative convened by the Bank for International Settlements and the Institute of International Finance, and is designed to explore how digital forms of existing money and new payment technology could help improve wholesale cross-border payments.

“Project Agorá reflects the kind of responsible innovation that has the potential to meaningfully improve how money moves across borders,” said Jo Jagadish, head of Digital & Payments and Consumer Deposits at TD Bank U.S., in a statement.

“Project Agorá highlights the potential of tokenized deposits making cross-border payments more efficient, transparent and resilient,” said Carolyn Weinberg, chief product & innovation officer at BNY.