Project Meridian FX APAC, a trial run by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Bank of England and the Bank of Thailand, showed that synchronised settlement can link central bank systems built on different technologies, the three central banks said on November 13.
The trial connected a synchronisation operator prototype, built by Singapore-based Partior, to simulated wholesale settlement environments at the three central banks, covering both real-time gross settlement and distributed ledger systems. The operator matched both currency legs of an FX trade and released them together or not at all, a method known as payment-versus-payment (PvP). It also ran multilateral net settlement across the three systems to lower the liquidity banks need. In tests with insufficient funds, invalid account details and temporary outages, the operator either completed each transaction or fully unwound it. Differing operating hours and long outages were not fully tested.
- More than US$1.4 trillion a day, about 10% of FX settlement in April 2025, was fully exposed to settlement risk, according to the BIS survey cited by MAS
- The Bank of England plans to launch a live synchronisation interface in 2028
- The Reserve Bank of Australia and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas joined the policy work as observers
MAS and the Bank of Thailand said their participation does not commit them to a similar build, The Paypers reported. The policy report adds that settling both legs at once in a test does not on its own create legal settlement finality across jurisdictions.
Why it matters: Much FX settlement risk comes from the two legs of a trade settling at different times in different systems. The trial suggests central banks could connect the systems they already run through a shared operator, without building one common platform. With a live Bank of England service due in 2028 and no build commitment yet from MAS or the Bank of Thailand, the next step to watch is whether Asian central banks test the model with real participants.
Source: MAS, November 13, 2026; Bank of England, November 13, 2026; The Paypers, November 13, 2026
Image: Steve Daniels, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
