Key Highlights

  • Project Acacia's Final Report, released in May, found tokenisation has potential to improve wholesale market efficiency.
  • The RBA's next step is a consultation on how its settlement services could support tokenised asset markets and tokenised private money.
  • The work sits alongside surcharging reform, the payments regulation review and the Cash Distribution Framework Act 2026.

Having concluded that tokenisation could make wholesale markets more efficient, the Reserve Bank is now asking how its own settlement services might support tokenised assets and tokenised private money.

Behind every large financial transaction, whether a bond trade, a big interbank transfer or the purchase of a parcel of shares, sits a moment of settlement: the point at which ownership and payment actually change hands for good. In Australia, the Reserve Bank plays a central role in that process for the wholesale financial system.

That role is now being examined in light of a newer technology. In her opening statement to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee on 28 October 2026, Governor Michele Bullock reported that the Project Acacia Final Report, released in May, found tokenisation has potential to improve wholesale market efficiency. The RBA is now consulting on how its settlement services could support tokenised asset markets and tokenised private money.

The announcement was brief, but it marks a notable shift from research into practical questions about infrastructure.

A quick guide to the terms

Discussions of tokenisation can quickly become jargon-heavy, so a few general definitions help.

  • Tokenisation broadly refers to representing an asset, or a claim on money, as a digital token recorded on a shared ledger or similar platform.
  • Tokenised asset markets are markets in which assets such as securities are issued, traded or held in tokenised form.
  • Tokenised private money refers to forms of money issued by private institutions, such as banks or other providers, in tokenised form, as distinct from money issued by the central bank.
  • Settlement services are the systems through which the final transfer of value between financial institutions takes place.
  • Wholesale markets are those in which financial institutions transact with one another, typically in large amounts, rather than retail markets involving consumers.

These definitions are general descriptions, not the RBA's formal terminology. Readers wanting precise definitions as used by the RBA may wish to consult its published material on Project Acacia.

What Project Acacia concluded

The Governor's summary of the Final Report is concise: tokenisation has potential to improve wholesale market efficiency. That is a measured finding. It does not claim that tokenisation will transform the financial system, nor that it is ready to replace existing arrangements. It identifies potential.

Efficiency in wholesale markets can mean several things in general terms, such as the speed with which trades settle, the cost of processing them, or the ease with which assets and payments can be coordinated. The RBA's statement does not specify which of these benefits it sees as most significant, and it would be speculative to rank them here.

What the finding does establish is that the RBA considers the technology worth taking seriously at the level of core infrastructure. That is why the next step involves its own settlement services.

Why settlement is the crux

In any market, tokenised or not, an asset transfer is only as good as the payment that goes with it. If a tokenised bond changes hands on one platform but the money to pay for it moves through an entirely separate system, the two legs must be coordinated. Much of the potential efficiency of tokenisation depends on how well that coordination works.

That is where central bank settlement comes in. In the wholesale system, settlement in central bank money is generally regarded as the safest form of final settlement, because it does not carry the credit risk of a private institution. Questions about how tokenised markets could connect to, or settle in, central bank money are therefore central to whether those markets can operate safely at scale.

The RBA's consultation, as the Governor described it, covers two related areas: how its settlement services could support tokenised asset markets, and how they could support tokenised private money. The second point is significant. It implies the RBA is considering a world in which privately issued tokenised money circulates in wholesale markets, and is asking what role central bank infrastructure should play in supporting it.

The RBA has not announced the outcome of that consultation, and it has not committed to any particular design. It is asking the question.

How this fits the wider payments picture

Project Acacia's follow-up is one of several payments workstreams the Governor outlined to the Senate. Others include:

  • The removal of card surcharging. "Card surcharging was removed from 1 October", the Governor said, as part of a package that also reduced interchange fee caps and is improving transparency.
  • The Review of Payments System Regulation, where stakeholders raised mobile wallets, three-party card schemes, account-to-account payments and agentic commerce. "We intend to release regulatory priorities by the end of 2026", the Governor said, with further consultation on prioritised issues by mid-2027.
  • The Cash Distribution Framework Act 2026, which gives the RBA crisis-readiness and resolution powers in cash distribution, with the ACCC overseeing pricing, access and service standards.

Taken together, these show the RBA working simultaneously on retail payments, cash and the wholesale infrastructure of the future. The tokenisation work sits at the most technical end of that range, but it concerns the plumbing on which much of the financial system relies.

There is also a link to the RBA's financial stability thinking. The October 2026 Financial Stability Review noted: "Optimism around AI is boosting asset prices and has considerable potential to improve productivity and resilience." That comment concerned artificial intelligence rather than tokenisation, but it reflects a broader theme of the RBA weighing both the promise and the risks of new technology.

For most households, wholesale settlement is invisible, and the RBA's consultation will not change how people pay for groceries. The Governor's statement concerns markets in which financial institutions deal with each other.

Even so, wholesale infrastructure underpins everyday finance. Improvements in how efficiently institutions settle with one another can, over time, influence costs and services further down the chain, although the RBA has not made any claims to that effect in the material discussed here. For now, the work is best understood as groundwork.

The bottom line

Project Acacia's Final Report, released in May, found that tokenisation has potential to improve wholesale market efficiency. The RBA's next step is a consultation on how its settlement services could support tokenised asset markets and tokenised private money.

That is a question about infrastructure, not a decision. The RBA has not set out a design or timeline for any changes. For anyone following the future of money in Australia, the consultation is worth watching as an indication of how the central bank sees its role in a tokenised wholesale system.