13 hours ago
9
Australia’s financial regulator has approved interim plans for a joint venture involving the country’s four largest banks: ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), and Westpac.
A pattern of big four cooperation
In July 2024, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) granted an interim authorisation allowing ANZ, CBA, NAB, and Westpac, alongside major retailers, to pool financial support for Armaguard, the country’s key cash-in-transit provider. That arrangement was valued at roughly $50 million over 12 months.
The banks also share history on the technology side. All four have participated in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia, which focuses on testing tokenized assets and stablecoins in wholesale market settings. NAB has been particularly active, testing tokenized term deposits using stablecoins, with updates on that work announced as recently as April 2026.
What Project Acacia tells us about direction
NAB’s tokenized term deposit experiments are a concrete example. Rather than issuing a traditional term deposit and tracking it through conventional systems, the bank created a digital token representing the deposit. Stablecoins served as the settlement mechanism.
The four banks have other collaborative precedents as well. ANZ previously participated in the Lygon blockchain project, which digitized bank guarantees. ANZ also formed a payments joint venture with Worldline, the European payments processor.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
English (US) ·