Australia’s 14 Firms to Participate in Digital Money Trials

Project Acacia, a joint initiative between the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), on Thursday reached a significant milestone with several industry participants selected to explore how innovations in digital money and existing settlement infrastructure might support the development of Australian wholesale tokenised asset markets.

Recent research suggests potential economic gains in markets and cross border payments could be in the order of $12.45 billion per year. Project Acacia is a significant step towards realising these gains, by providing evidence on the forms of money and settlement models that best enable tokenised real-world asset markets.

This work is also supported by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), and the Australian Treasury and is one of the initiatives highlighted in the Government’s March 2025 Statement on Developing an Innovative Australian Digital Asset Industry.

Accordingly, 24 innovative use cases from a diverse range of organisations, ranging from local fintechs to major banks, have been conditionally selected for this next stage of the project. They include 19 pilot use cases, which will involve real money and real asset transactions, and five proof-of-concept use cases involving simulated transactions.

The use cases involve a range of asset classes, including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables and carbon credits.

The proposed settlement assets for the use cases include stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), as well as new ways of using banks’ existing exchange settlement accounts at the RBA.

Issuance of pilot wholesale CBDC for testing use cases will occur on a range of private and public-permissioned DLT platforms, including Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect and other EVM-compatible networks.

Supporting Project Acacia, ASIC is providing regulatory relief to participants to support and streamline the pilot. 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.

ASIC has previously provided individual relief of a similar nature to participants in earlier digital money projects led by the RBA, which is available on the Federal Register of Legislation.

Project Acacia’s Next Steps

Testing of use cases will occur over the next six months, with a report on the findings from the project expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026. The findings of this next stage of the project will support the RBA’s ongoing research into how innovation in the financial system can best support the Australian economy in the digital age.

Lead use case participants are; Australian Bond Exchange, Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporation, Australian Payments Plus, Canvas, Catena Digital, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Fireblocks, Forte Tech Solutions, Imperium Markets, Northern Trust, NotCentralised, ProspEx Group, Westpac Banking Corporation and Zerocap.

Brad Jones, Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the RBA said that ensuring that Australia’s payments and monetary arrangements are fit-for-purpose in the digital age is a strategic priority for the RBA and the Payments System Board.

ASIC Commissioner Kate O’Rourke said that innovation is a sign of a vibrant economy and society. ASIC supports the responsible development of new technologies, including tokenisation and distributed ledgers.

“Importantly, Project Acacia will allow industry and regulators to work together to learn more about how these use cases may reshape the financial services industry, potentially boosting efficiency and foster economic growth,” she said.

Professor Talis Putnins, Chief Scientist at DFCRC said that the real money settlement models being tested, including issuing pilot wholesale CBDC on third party platforms, reflects another world-first for Australia in this rapidly evolving field.