The Bank for International Settlements on June 23 set out a two-track policy agenda for digital money: address weaknesses in current stablecoin arrangements while bringing tokenisation into the central-bank-anchored, two-tier monetary system.
The agenda appears in a special chapter of the BIS Annual Economic Report 2026, released with a same-day press statement. It is not a proposal to prohibit stablecoins. Instead, the BIS argues that the policy response should depend partly on whether a stablecoin is used at scale for payments or remains primarily an investment instrument, while authorities pursue regulated forms of programmable money built around central and commercial bank liabilities.
For payment companies, banks and stablecoin issuers, that distinction matters. It frames the debate around what a token is used for, how redemption is supported and how it connects with other payment systems, rather than treating every stablecoin arrangement as a single category.
Why the BIS says present designs fall short
The BIS acknowledges that stablecoins demonstrate part of tokenisation’s potential, including faster and programmable payments. Its concern is that current arrangements do not consistently reproduce the institutional properties that allow bank deposits and central bank money to exchange at par and settle obligations without users assessing the quality of each individual claim.
The report focuses on singleness of money, system-level liquidity, interoperability and financial integrity. Stablecoins can trade away from par in secondary markets, depend on finite reserve portfolios for redemption and circulate across public blockchains that do not necessarily share common governance, compliance or settlement arrangements. Fragmentation across ledgers can also divide liquidity and add reconciliation or bridging risks.
These are design and market-structure concerns, not a claim that every stablecoin will fail. The BIS says outcomes depend on reserve composition, use, regulation and the response of the wider financial system. Its analysis therefore points toward differentiated safeguards rather than a single universal rule.
Payments growth could reach beyond the issuer
The report says widespread adoption could alter bank funding and credit provision as users shift balances from deposits into stablecoins. If issuers hold reserves in short-term government debt, increased demand may affect sovereign funding conditions; large redemptions could transmit stress back into money markets. The balance between those channels depends on the assets issuers are permitted to hold and the scale and speed of adoption.
Cross-border use adds another dimension. Most stablecoins are denominated in US dollars, so strong demand in economies with weaker monetary fundamentals could make capital flows more volatile and challenge domestic monetary sovereignty. For payment providers expanding in such markets, the policy issue extends beyond anti-money-laundering controls and reserve disclosure to the effect that a foreign-currency payment instrument may have on local funding and currency use.
The BIS does not forecast a single outcome. It describes stylised scenarios and says the overall effect on economic activity could be modest, while still identifying potentially significant consequences for funding markets, credit and financial stability under broader adoption.
A tokenised alternative within the two-tier system
The second track is to combine programmable infrastructure with the existing roles of central banks and regulated commercial banks. The BIS describes a unified-ledger model that could connect tokenised central bank reserves, tokenised commercial bank deposits and tokenised assets under common institutional and legal safeguards.
In practical terms, the objective is to preserve settlement in central bank money while allowing regulated private institutions to deliver payment and financial services. Tokenisation could support round-the-clock operations, simultaneous exchange of money and assets, automated transactions and less reconciliation, without requiring all activity to migrate to privately issued bearer tokens on unrelated public networks.
Project Agorá is the BIS’s principal cross-border example. The public-private project brings together eight central banks and more than 40 regulated financial institutions. Its prototype uses a shared platform for tokenised commercial bank deposits alongside separate jurisdiction-specific ledgers for tokenised central bank reserves, testing whether the structure can improve wholesale cross-border payments.
Implications for payments strategy
The policy signal is that programmable payments and regulated money are not being treated as opposing choices. Stablecoin providers can expect closer scrutiny of par redemption, reserve liquidity, interoperability, governance and financial-crime controls, particularly where tokens become widely used for everyday or cross-border payments. Banks and payment processors, meanwhile, have an opening to build tokenised services that retain access to central bank settlement and existing supervisory frameworks.
Independent analysis from Ledger Insights characterised the BIS position as more prescriptive than dismissive, while arguing that regulation and private-sector compliance tools are already beginning to address some of the identified gaps. That tension is likely to shape implementation: policymakers want common safeguards and institutional anchors, while market participants are developing several competing technical routes to programmable settlement.
The June 23 release starts a policy agenda rather than establishing a new rulebook. The full annual report is scheduled for publication on June 28. For the payments industry, the immediate takeaway is that authorities are moving from a binary debate over stablecoins toward a comparison of architectures, with payment use, redemption design and connection to central bank money becoming central tests.