Tokenization pilot shows big gains
Australia’s central‑bank tokenization pilot is being touted as capable of delivering roughly $16.7 billion in efficiency gains for wholesale markets, spotlighting web3 tools for settlement and asset mobility. Market participants are increasingly viewing tokenization as a practical lever for wholesale finance modernization. (x.com)
RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones framed Project Acacia’s conclusions in remarks on 25 March 2026, saying the work moves the debate “from whether tokenisation has a future in Australia’s financial system, to how it should be implemented.” (rba.gov.au) Project Acacia ran a broad set of experiments — 24 use cases including 19 real‑money pilots — that spanned fixed‑income, private markets, trade receivables and carbon credits to test tokenised asset and money interactions. (thefintechtimes.com) The RBA signalled follow‑up work including exploration of a digital financial market infrastructure (DFMI) sandbox to let industry and policymakers build on Acacia’s learnings. (cointelegraph.com) ASIC granted temporary regulatory relief to enable tokenised‑asset settlement testing inside the research project announced in July 2025, clearing a path for live experiments with stablecoins and bank deposit tokens. (asic.gov.au) Pilots explicitly compared settlement using AUD stablecoins, bank‑issued deposit tokens and a pilot wholesale CBDC to assess continuous (24/7) settlement mechanics and counterparty risk in tokenised workflows. (thefintechtimes.com) Solifi’s recent strategic moves — including the September 2025 acquisition of DataScan to add wholesale floorplan and inventory‑risk capabilities — align the vendor landscape to support dealer/dealer‑portal workflows that tokenised settlement models would expose and scale. (sfnet.com) Case evidence of platform readiness for tokenised wholesale flows appears in recent Solifi deployments: Kawasaki Motors Finance migrated its U.S. wholesale operations onto Solifi’s floorplan platform to centralise dealer self‑service and inventory financing, and Rosenthal & Rosenthal implemented Solifi equipment‑finance modules to expand origination and servicing capacity. (magazine.factoring.org) The RBA and industry are moving to operational testing and governance steps — advisory groups, sandboxing and settlement‑account access reviews — indicating a near‑term industry effort to translate Acacia’s experimental outcomes into production‑grade market infrastructure. (cointelegraph.com)
