Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporation (ASX:ANZ, NZE:ANZ), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX:CBA), and Westpac Banking (ASX:WBC, NZE:WBC) were among the use case participants selected to take part in the next stage of Project Acacia, which explores how innovations in digital money and settlement infrastructure could support the development of Australian wholesale tokenized asset markets, according to a Thursday statement.

24 use cases, involving a range of asset classes, including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits, were selected to be tested over the next six months as part of the stage, across a diverse range of organizations, ranging from financial technology firms to major banks.

The proposed settlement assets for the use cases include stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), as well as new ways of using banks' existing exchange settlement accounts at the RBA.

The issuance of pilot wholesale CBDC for testing use cases will occur on a range of private and public-permissioned DLT platforms. A report on the findings from the project is expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026.

Project Acacia is a joint initiative between the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center, and is supported by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), and the Australian Treasury.