What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: The RBA has opened a consultation on how its settlement services could support tokenised finance in Australia, and Ledger Insights reported that the consultation closes on 30 October 2026. The consultation is described by the RBA as one of 11 initiatives identified in the Project Acacia Final Report.
- Institutions involved: The main institution is the Reserve Bank of Australia, including its RITS settlement system; the work follows Project Acacia, which the RBA has linked to industry engagement on tokenised markets.
- Regulatory/technical context: The consultation focuses on synchronising tokenised asset platforms with RITS and the Fast Settlement Service to support delivery-versus-payment settlement with central bank reserves. RBA materials also say Project Acacia identified industry interest in using central bank reserves as backing assets for Australian dollar-denominated stablecoins and discuss access to central bank reserves for stablecoin issuers as a live policy issue.
- What to watch next: Stakeholder submissions to the consultation are the clearest next milestone; beyond that, no specific post-consultation decision date was identified in the material reviewed.
Why it matters
This signals that Australia’s central bank is moving from experimentation toward concrete policy design for how tokenised assets, stablecoins and existing central bank settlement infrastructure could interoperate in wholesale markets.
HKMA Relevance
Indirect: The RBA’s work on synchronised settlement, tokenised money and wholesale stablecoin backing adds to regional central-bank practice that could inform Hong Kong’s own tokenisation and wholesale settlement frameworks.