Australia runs the most concrete wholesale CBDC plus tokenised assets pilot in APAC outside Project Ensemble in the form of project acacia, led by RBA in collaboration with Treasury, ASIC, and the Digital Finance CRC. The operating posture across ASIC, apra, and austrac is incremental: stretch existing financial services, prudential, and AML rules to fit tokenised products, and reserve net-new legislation for genuinely novel categories such as digital-asset platforms. The legislative reform pipeline (Token Mapping, Regulating Digital Asset Platforms, custody and asset-holder licensing) is still moving through Treasury consultation rather than statute as of late 2025. Compared with Singapore, which moved earlier on a Single-Currency Stablecoin perimeter and Project Guardian, Australia is roughly a cycle behind on stablecoin law and one cycle ahead on wholesale settlement experimentation. Compared with Hong Kong, the AUD stablecoin perimeter is narrower in scope and slower to ship, but the wholesale-pilot ambition is in the same league.

Regulatory posture

ASIC is the conduct regulator and the agency most operators interact with first. Its signature move has been to classify a meaningful share of crypto-assets and tokenised products as financial products triggering the Australian Financial Services Licence regime, primarily through INFO 225 (crypto-asset offers and intermediaries) and INFO 273 (stablecoin and crypto-related advice). The default for any tokenised investment offering, whether the wrapper is a managed investment scheme, a derivative, or a security-style instrument, is to fit it into an AFSL plus the relevant product disclosure regime rather than wait for bespoke law.

RBA runs the wholesale settlement experiments, most visibly project acacia. apra is prudential regulator for banks and insurers, with conservative posture on tokenised deposits and digital-asset exposures, capital and liquidity treatment closely tracking Basel guidance. austrac runs the AML/CTF perimeter through Digital Currency Exchange registration, capturing most exchanges and remitters. Treasury owns the legislative pipeline, including the 2023 Token Mapping paper and the Regulating Digital Asset Platforms proposal that contemplates a separate licensing regime for platform operators with carve-outs for asset-holder rules and custody. The fit-existing-law approach has clear limits for novel custody and intermediary categories, which is why the consultation pipeline matters even as it moves slowly.

Active pilots

• project acacia. RBA-led wholesale CBDC plus tokenised assets pilot with multiple use-case streams covering tokenised settlement, smart payments, FX, and repo. Phase 1 partner selection ran through 2025 following the October 2024 announcement; Phase 2 launched July 2025 with 24 selected use cases, ASIC regulatory relief allowing the use cases to operate inside the pilot perimeter, and test ledgers spanning Hedera, Redbelly, R3 Corda, and Canvas Connect (RBA media release MR-25-18). Phase 2 settlement-asset scope explicitly covers tokenised bank deposit tokens, regulated stablecoins, wholesale CBDC, and Exchange Settlement Account (ESA) balances. Phase 2 report expected Q1 2026 (RBA speech, 25 Mar 2026).
• project mariana and Project Agorá Australian participation. The BIS Innovation Hub Sydney centre anchors AUD legs in cross-border CBDC and tokenised-deposit experiments.
• Treasury digital-asset platform licensing consultation. Regulating Digital Asset Platforms proposal toward a separate licensing regime distinct from the AFSL, with custody and asset-holder rules at the core. Still pre-legislative as of early 2026.
• Bank-led tokenised-deposit pilots. CBA, Westpac, NAB, ANZ and Macquarie have run internal and consortium pilots, with operational depth varying significantly across institutions.

Key institutions

• ASIC. Conduct regulator, AFSL gatekeeper, INFO 225 and INFO 273 issuer.
• RBA. Central bank and Project Acacia operator.
• apra. Prudential regulator for banks and insurers; tokenised-deposit capital treatment.
• austrac. AML/CTF regulator running Digital Currency Exchange registration.
• au treasury. Owner of the Token Mapping paper and the Digital Asset Platform legislative proposal.
• cba, westpac, nab, anz, macquarie. Bank participants and observers in tokenised-deposit and Acacia work.

Open questions

• Whether project acacia produces a production-grade wholesale settlement asset or remains a pilot, and which use-case streams (FX, repo, tokenised securities settlement) graduate first.
• Status of the Treasury Digital Asset Platform licensing legislation: whether a bill is introduced before the next federal election cycle, and whether custody and asset-holder rules survive consultation in their current shape.
• Whether the AUD stablecoin race produces a credible regulated issuer, and whether it is bank-led (tokenised deposit dressed as stablecoin) or non-bank (an MPI-style narrow issuer modelled on the Singapore SCS framework).
• How apra treats tokenised deposits in the capital regime, particularly intra-group versus cross-bank issuance and whether haircuts diverge from Basel guidance.
• Whether Australian asset managers running offshore vehicles for tokenised private credit migrate the wrapper onshore once the DAP regime lands, or keep the offshore structure for distribution reasons.
• Whether ASIC develops a position on agentic-commerce flows, particularly AI agents holding regulated financial products on behalf of retail clients without a separate AFSL boundary.

Related

• Stablecoin types for the AUD stablecoin perimeter and how an MAS SCS-style design would translate.
• Tokenisation, defined for the legal-control plumbing relevant to AFSL-wrapped tokenised products.
• hong kong, japan, singapore for regional benchmark comparison.
• Project Ensemble, project mariana, Project Agorá for cross-border settlement context.
• BIS Innovation Hub for the Sydney centre's role in AUD-leg cross-border experiments.