Highlights

  • Project Acacia identifies potential efficiency and resilience gains in wholesale markets.
  • Coordination challenges prevent tokenised innovations from reaching scale.
  • The RBA consults on settlement services for tokenised Assets and private money.

Tokenised finance is gathering momentum in Australia, but coordination challenges across the financial system continue to limit its scale. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Michele Bullock told a Senate committee on 28 October 2026 that the Central Bank was progressing work on its settlement services as part of efforts to support responsible financial innovation.

Project Acacia Sets Out the Potential Benefits

The Project Acacia Final Report, published in May, found that tokenisation of assets and money could improve the efficiency and resilience of Australia’s wholesale financial markets when combined with upgrades to market infrastructure.

The finding describes potential benefits. Bullock said coordination challenges across the financial system had meant that the innovations were yet to scale, even as momentum built in Australia and internationally.

Following the post-Acacia roadmap, the RBA has continued initiatives aimed at supporting responsible innovation. The work links the development of tokenised markets with the infrastructure and cooperation needed for those markets to grow.

Settlement Services Become a Focus of Consultation

The central bank is consulting on how its own settlement services could support the development and growth of tokenised asset markets and tokenised private money in Australia.

That consultation is one example of the initiatives under way after Acacia. Bullock presented it as work in progress, with the role of settlement services still being examined rather than announced as a completed system.

The Governor said this activity, together with the Government’s Financial Innovation Strategy, was bringing the public and private sectors together. The Digital Cooperative Research Centre is among the participants in that wider effort.

The stated objective is to position Australia to capture the benefits of financial innovation in a way consistent with monetary and financial stability. Those objectives frame how the RBA approaches the opportunities identified by the report.

Innovation Sits Within a Wider Payments Agenda

The tokenisation work forms part of a broader payments and infrastructure agenda. Bullock said the RBA’s responsibilities include supporting a reliable, efficient and competitive payments system, alongside setting Monetary Policy and supporting financial stability.

Separately, amendments to the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998 expanded the RBA’s regulatory remit. A broader Review of Payments System Regulation began with a June Issues Paper and is considering how regulation should respond to rapid innovation.

Stakeholder submissions to that review frequently raised mobile wallets, three-party card schemes, account-to-account payments and agentic commerce. The RBA intends to publish regulatory priorities by the end of 2026 and begin further consultation on prioritised issues by mid-2027.

Those review milestones sit alongside the Acacia initiatives rather than establishing a deadline for tokenised finance to reach scale. Bullock’s statement leaves the central challenge clearly defined: potential efficiency and resilience gains require coordination across the financial system, while consultation continues on the support the RBA’s settlement services could provide.