Bank of England, MAS and Bank of Thailand test synchronized FX settlement across different systems

The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand published the findings of Project Meridian FX APAC on 13 November 2026. The trial tested whether “synchronization”, a service that coordinates movements of central bank money, can link wholesale settlement systems built on different technologies so that foreign exchange trades settle more safely.

What was tested

The project ran payment-versus-payment FX settlement, in which both legs of a currency trade settle together or not at all, and multilateral net FX settlement across the three central banks’ test environments. Those environments included both conventional real-time gross settlement systems and systems based on distributed ledger technology, and spanned more currencies, technologies and time zones than earlier phases. Partior, the delivery partner, built and tested the prototype synchronization operator.

The central banks said the trial showed synchronized settlement can work across systems with different capabilities, and set out the requirements and trade-offs involved. They said multilateral netting can help banks use their liquidity more efficiently by offsetting payments against each other. The project also looked at the legal, regulatory and oversight questions, with the Reserve Bank of Australia and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas taking part as observers. The findings are in three reports: an executive summary, a technical report and a policy report.

Why it matters

The central banks said the results make cross-border FX transactions safer and more efficient. The Bank of England plans to launch a live synchronization interface in 2028, and said the findings show how the approach could become a live service. “Project Meridian FX APAC provides practical evidence of how synchronised settlement could help reduce risk and improve efficiency in cross-border FX transactions,” said Tom Mutton, the Bank’s Executive Director of Payments, Innovation and Fintech.

What happens next

The central banks said future work could extend the approach to more jurisdictions, industry participants, currencies and transaction types, and look further at the legal arrangements needed in practice. For a related ECB project on settling tokenized transactions in central bank money, read our brief.