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# UK, Singapore and Thailand central banks publish findings of synchronised cross-border FX settlement trial
- URL: https://www.theglobalbanker.com/uk-singapore-and-thailand-central-banks-publish-findings-of-synchronised-cross-border-fx-settlement-trial/
- Published: 2026-11-13T19:35:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-13T19:35:29.000Z
- Description: The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand say Project Meridian FX APAC shows synchronisation could cut risk in FX settlement, where more than US$1.4 trillion of average daily FX settlement remained fully exposed in April 2025.
- Author: TGB Editorial Team
- Tags: Fintech, Global, #newsroom, #needs-photo

The Bank of England, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand published the findings from their collaboration on foreign exchange (FX) settlement under Project Meridian FX APAC. The project covered PvP settlement, which ensures that the transfer of one currency occurs if and only if the transfer of the other currency also occurs, and multilateral net FX across the three central banks' test environments, spanning both Real-Time Gross Settlement and Distributed Ledger Technology-based settlement systems.

The central banks said the trial demonstrated that synchronised settlement can be achieved across central bank systems with different technologies and capabilities, while identifying the requirements and trade-offs involved. According to the 2025 BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey, more than US$1.4 trillion, or 10%, of average daily FX settlement in April 2025 remained fully exposed to settlement risk.

## HOW SYNCHRONISATION WORKS

PvP settlement reduces FX settlement risk, the release said. Partior, the project's delivery partner and a DLT-based market infrastructure provider for clearing and settlement, developed, integrated and tested the Synchronisation Operator, a coordination layer that enables atomic settlement across different settlement systems by ensuring that linked transfers occur together, or not at all.

The central banks said they demonstrated how multilateral net FX settlement can support banks in using their liquidity more efficiently by netting payments against each other. According to the project's technical report, across the exception scenarios tested the Synchronisation Operator was able either to complete settlement successfully or to fully unwind the transaction without leaving individual payment legs to proceed independently.

## EARLIER WORK AND THE 2028 INTERFACE

The APAC project was announced in November 2025\. An earlier project, Meridian FX, a joint project between the Bank for International Settlements, Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Italy, Deutsche Bundesbank and European Central Bank, explored synchronising foreign exchange (FX) transactions. The BIS said Meridian FX sought to address some of the actions called for in the Group of 20 cross-border payments roadmap.

The APAC project encompassed a wider range of currencies, technologies, infrastructures and time zones, the release said. The Bank of England has announced its intention to launch a live synchronisation interface in 2028, as part of its Call for Input on the Future of Tokenisation with the FCA.

## OPERATING HOURS AND NEXT STEPS

The technical report notes that the experiment assumed overlapping system availability and did not model differences in RTGS operating hours across jurisdictions or the expiry of earmarks. It says co-ordinating settlement across jurisdictions with non-overlapping operating hours remains an important challenge, particularly where systems do not support 24/7 settlement, and is worthy of further investigation.

The central banks said future work could involve extending the approach to additional jurisdictions and industry participants, and to a wider range of currencies and transaction scenarios. The Reserve Bank of Australia and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas participated as observer central banks.

Tom Mutton, Executive Director of Payments, Innovation and Fintech at the Bank of England, said the project "provides practical evidence of how synchronised settlement could help reduce risk and improve efficiency in cross-border FX transactions". Kenneth Gay, Chief FinTech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said it showed how synchronisation "could help enable PvP settlement across these diverse environments". Pucktada Treeratpituk, Director of Payment Systems and Financial Technology Policy Department at the Bank of Thailand, said the project "successfully demonstrated that synchronisation can work across diverse wholesale settlement systems, making cross-border FX safer and more efficient while preserving trust in central bank money".

## THE TGB VIEW

TGB's market profiles put the balance sheet of [UK](https://www.theglobalbanker.com/market-united-kingdom/)\-resident banks and building societies at £10.9tn in September 2026, with 54% of liabilities in foreign currency in July 2026; Singapore's commercial banks held S$4,154.6bn of assets at end-September 2026, more than five times GDP, and Thailand's deposit takers THB 23.6tn in March 2026\. The trial assumed overlapping system availability, and the technical report calls non-overlapping operating hours an important challenge. The next dated step is the Bank of England's intended live synchronisation interface in 2028.

*Related: [Bank of England raises Bank Rate to 4% in 8–1 vote, with one member backing 4.25%](https://www.theglobalbanker.com/bank-of-england-raises-bank-rate-to-4-in-8-1-vote-with-one-member-backing-4-25/)*