Three central banks have successfully completed trials demonstrating that synchronized foreign exchange settlement can work across traditional real-time gross settlement systems and distributed ledger technology platforms. The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand published the findings from Project Meridian FX APAC on 13 November 2026.

The experiments tested payment-versus-payment settlement, in which both legs of a currency exchange settle simultaneously or not at all, along with multilateral net settlement. A prototype Synchronization Operator developed by technology firm Partior coordinated the transfers across the three distinct test environments.

Trial Design and Systems Tested

Project Meridian FX APAC built on earlier Meridian FX work and expanded the scope to a wider range of currencies, technologies, infrastructures and time zones. The Bank of England used its Synchronisation Lab, a traditional account-based real-time gross settlement test environment. The Bank of Thailand contributed Project SAN, a centralized tokenized payment system with an interoperability layer. Singapore provided its SGD Testnet, a distributed ledger technology platform supporting wholesale central bank digital currency with participant-controlled wallets.

The Synchronization Operator matched settlement instructions, coordinated the reservation of funds, monitored readiness and triggered final settlement. Tests covered both bilateral payment-versus-payment trades and multilateral netting, in which overlapping obligations among multiple participants are offset to reduce the liquidity each bank must hold.

The trials confirmed that atomic settlement remains possible across systems with materially different architectures, provided core synchronization capabilities exist. Where capabilities differed, the operator sometimes needed to perform additional functions, increasing integration complexity.

Liquidity Benefits and Technical Limits

Multilateral net settlement proved technically achievable. By coordinating a common set of eligible transactions and ensuring liquidity remained reserved across all systems until completion, the approach reduced the amount of funds participants needed to maintain while still preserving the all-or-nothing settlement principle.

The experiments ran entirely in simulated environments. They did not involve live production systems, real commercial counterparties or actual money. Officials noted that longer outages, non-overlapping operating hours and true production volumes were outside the scope of the tests. Technical differences between the platforms also expanded the range of responsibilities assigned to the operator in some scenarios.

Policy and Regulatory Considerations

Alongside the technical work, a policy workstream examined the conditions required for a live cross-border service. Key issues include settlement finality under different national legal frameworks, the governance and oversight of any Synchronization Operator, liability allocation when errors occur, and the form of regulatory cooperation needed between authorities.

The Reserve Bank of Australia and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas participated as observers and contributed perspectives. The three reports published with the findings—an executive summary, a technical report and a policy report—make clear that technical coordination alone does not create legally binding settlements across jurisdictions.

Path Toward 2028 Implementation

The Bank of England stated that the trial results will inform the design of a live synchronization interface it plans to introduce in 2028. Neither Singapore nor Thailand has announced an equivalent operational commitment or timeline.

The work sits against a backdrop of substantial foreign exchange settlement volumes that still carry residual risk. Industry surveys have shown that a material share of daily FX obligations continues to settle without payment-versus-payment protection, leaving counterparties exposed to the possibility that one side of a trade completes while the other does not.

Project Meridian FX APAC demonstrates one practical route to narrowing that exposure by linking heterogeneous central bank systems without requiring them to adopt a single common technology. The next phase of work will need to address the remaining operational, legal and governance questions before any production service can be offered.