J.P. Morgan, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), and HQLA^X have completed a milestone trial under Project Acacia – a joint initiative led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). The project explored how digital money and tokenized assets can reshape Australia’s wholesale funding markets.

Driving progress in Australia’s repo market

This collaboration demonstrates how digital currencies and digital collateral records can enhance the speed, efficiency and resilience of Australia’s $350 billion repurchasing agreement (repo) market.² The repo market is a critical component of the Australian financial system, providing essential short-term funding for banks and financial institutions, enabling the RBA to implement monetary policy, facilitating liquidity management, and supporting the efficient functioning of government bond markets.

Bianca Bates, Head of J.P. Morgan Payments in Australia and New Zealand, said, “This signals a turning point for Australia’s repo market, showing that digital money and tokenized assets can deliver the speed, transparency and resilience that modern financial systems demand. By linking existing infrastructure with platforms like Kinexys, we’re creating a pathway for key players to transition to next-generation infrastructure today. Kinexys by J.P. Morgan provided the blockchain infrastructure to make this possible, building on our track record of processing over $4 trillion in notional volume of transactions since inception and driving meaningful innovation in markets around the world.”

Innovating settlement and collaboration

The use case combined global and domestic infrastructure, including Kinexys by J.P. Morgan’s multi-asset tokenization platform, CBA’s Gravital digital assets platform, HQLA^X’s collateral mobility solution and ASX’s local market expertise, to test interoperable settlement models in a controlled test environment.

As part of the trial, repo transactions were settled using CBA Deposit Token and wholesale Australian Dollar Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), with the securities leg orchestrated on the HQLA^X platform using tokenized assets held at ASX.

Sophie Gilder, Managing Director, Blockchain and Digital Assets at CBA, said, “Tokenization is moving from theory into real-world application in core financial markets and has the potential to reshape how systemically important funding markets operate. For a market as critical as repo, even small gains in speed, liquidity and risk reduction can have system-wide impact. With technology maturing, regulatory progress underway and global investment accelerating, the conditions are now falling into place for tokenization to scale.”

Richard Glen, Solutions Architect at HQLA^X, said, “Project Acacia demonstrates how tokenized collateral and digital cash can materially enhance efficiency, liquidity and resilience in capital markets. Importantly, the initiative highlights how interoperable digital technology can evolve in alignment with regulatory expectations, supporting the next generation of robust and well-governed market infrastructure.”

Project Acacia highlights the potential for digital money and tokenized assets to support the evolution of wholesale funding markets. First announced in 2024, the initiative demonstrates the value of collaboration across the financial ecosystem and the importance of innovation in building resilient, efficient market infrastructure.

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