UK, Singapore and Thailand Launch Atomic FX Settlement Trial

Central Banks Trial Atomic Settlement Model

The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand have launched a joint experiment to settle tokenised foreign-platform trades using a synchronised settlement mechanism that completes both legs of a transaction at the identical moment, regardless of time zone or jurisdiction. The initiative extends previous work by the Bank for International Settlements and marks the first coordinated effort by the three central banks to apply atomic settlement principles to live FX workflows.

The project builds on the Bank of England’s renewed RTGS system—known as RT2—which includes a synchronisation function allowing funds to move only when an associated asset transfer on an external ledger has also completed. Under the trial, simulated tokenised FX trades will run through RTGS and distributed-ledger environments using a synchronisation operator—a neutral service that either triggers both legs to settle simultaneously or cancels the trade if one side fails. The approach is designed to extend Payment-versus-Payment (PvP) protection beyond current settlement utilities such as CLS.

Investor Takeaway

Background: The Herstatt Risk difficulty

Settlement risk has shaped central-bank policy since 1974, when the collapse of Bankhaus Herstatt left counterparties exposed later than delivering one currency but not receiving the other. That episode led to decades of reform efforts, including the BIS-backed push for PvP adoption in the 1990s and the launch of CLS in 2002 as a global FX settlement utility. Yet large parts of the market remain outside PvP coverage, and cross-border settlement is still fragmented across diverse time zones and jurisdictions.

Recent BIS Innovation Hub projects such as mBridge and Dunbar have shown that multi-currency wholesale central-bank digital currency rails can process . The Meridian FX, released in April 2025, demonstrated that synchronised settlement between RTGS systems—and between RTGS and distributed-ledger platforms—is technically achievable. The bank followed up in October by opening a dedicated Synchronisation Lab to test operators and live use cases.

Regional Efforts in Singapore and Thailand

The has run similar tokenisation experiments under Project Guardian, testing tokenised bills, bond trading and wholesale-CBDC settlement with local financial institutions. The Bank of Thailand has been a core participant in mBridge, which reached a minimum viable product phase in 2024. The new trilateral project links these threads, testing how synchronised settlement could function across multiple infrastructures without requiring a single shared platform.

Synchronisation creates a conditional connection between domestic RTGS accounts and external ledgers carrying tokenised assets—whether tokenised bank liabilities, tokenised government securities or wholesale-CBDC balances. If proven effective, the model could extend PvP protection to a wider range of currency pairs while retaining settlement finality in central-bank money.

Investor Takeaway

Governance, Liquidity and Policy Questions

Questions remain over how synchronisation operators will be governed and who will have access to them—whether they resemble financial-market infrastructures or commercial providers. Liquidity implications will also be monitored, as atomic settlement eliminates principal risk but could alter intraday liquidity needs compared with current RTGS processes and CLS operations.

Policy boundaries will need to be drawn between tokenised bank deposits, stablecoins and wholesale-CBDCs. Singapore has already outlined a and continues to test tokenised bills with domestic banks. The of England and the Bank of Thailand are watching closely to assess how such models could interact with existing monetary systems.

That said, the three central banks describe the initiative as a technical trial. If the model scales successfully, it could expand PvP coverage and connect RTGS systems with tokenised markets through common standards. The work reflects a practical are viewking to upgrade connectivity rather than build new settlement networks from scratch.