Quick answer: Mojaloop, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and token standards like ERC-20 are three separate pieces of the same puzzle: making value move across borders quickly and cheaply. Mojaloop is open-source software that lets different payment systems talk to each other. CBDCs are digital forms of central bank money being tested for settlement. ERC-20 is a token standard on Ethereum that shows how a shared interface makes assets interoperable. None of them is a single product you buy, and Mojaloop does not run on ERC-20; they are complementary approaches to interoperability.
Updated 07/17/2026. By Jake Claver. Educational content, not investment advice.
Cross-border payments are slow and expensive because there is no single network connecting every country’s banks. Money hops between correspondent banks, each adding time, cost, and settlement risk. The projects below all try to remove those hops, but they work at different layers of the stack. Each claim here traces back to a named primary source.
The thread connecting them is interoperability: the ability for separate systems to exchange value using shared rules instead of custom, one-off connections.
What Mojaloop actually is
Mojaloop is open-source software, stewarded by the Mojaloop Foundation, that lets banks, mobile money providers, and payment platforms connect to one shared network rather than building a separate link to each counterparty. It was designed around financial inclusion in emerging economies, where large populations use mobile money but sit outside traditional banking rails. Instead of a closed proprietary switch, Mojaloop provides a common interoperability layer any licensed provider can join.
Where CBDC interoperability fits
A central bank digital currency is a digital form of central bank money. The technical feasibility question was tested most rigorously by Project Hamilton, a joint effort by the MIT Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The team built OpenCBDC-tx, a transaction processor for a hypothetical U.S. CBDC, and reported throughput of roughly 170,000 transactions per second in one architecture and up to 1.7 million per second in a second design. That research, which concluded in 2023, focused on engineering feasibility rather than any policy recommendation.
Throughput alone does not solve cross-border friction, though. A domestic CBDC only helps international payments if it can interoperate with other systems. That is the gap the BIS Innovation Hub studies through multi-central-bank experiments on cross-border CBDC settlement.
The Mojaloop CBDC Center of Excellence
In June 2022 the Mojaloop Foundation launched a CBDC Center of Excellence, based in Singapore, to study how CBDC technology and Mojaloop’s software can lower the cost of fast payments and cross-border transfers. The initiative’s working group has included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Google, Ripple, and others. Its use-case work, published in the CBDC use-case assessment, singled out wholesale CBDC for settling cross-border transactions as one of the most promising applications, because that is where existing friction is highest.
What ERC-20 has to do with any of this
ERC-20 is not part of Mojaloop, and this is worth stating plainly to avoid a common confusion. ERC-20 is a token standard on Ethereum, proposed by Fabian Vogelsteller in November 2015, that defines a common set of functions a fungible token must implement, including transfer, balanceOf, and approve, per the Ethereum documentation. Because every ERC-20 token exposes the same interface, wallets and exchanges can support any of them with identical logic.
The reason ERC-20 belongs in this conversation is the principle, not the technology. ERC-20 shows what a shared standard buys you: instead of custom integration for each new asset, one interface makes thousands of tokens interoperable. Mojaloop applies the same idea to payment systems, and CBDC cross-border projects apply it to central bank money. Different layers, same lesson.
Wholesale settlement and Project Nexus
On the settlement side, the BIS Project Nexus takes a different route to the same goal. Rather than a new currency, Nexus interlinks existing domestic instant-payment systems so an operator makes one connection to reach many countries. Its core partners are the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, and in July 2024 those five announced their intention to move toward live implementation, with a Nexus Scheme Organisation to be based in Singapore. The broader research trail also includes the BIS report on using CBDCs across borders (see the BIS cross-border CBDC experiments PDF) and the World Bank work on payment interoperability.
Why this matters
Cross-border payment infrastructure is a repeat-use problem: billions of transfers a year, most of them small remittances where fees fall hardest on the people who can least afford them. Whether the answer is open payment software like Mojaloop, interlinked instant-payment systems like Nexus, or wholesale CBDCs for settlement, the shared aim is fewer intermediaries and lower cost. These are infrastructure stories first. Any investment implication is separate, and the technology working does not translate into a specific asset going up.
Common questions
Is Mojaloop a cryptocurrency?
No. Mojaloop is open-source software that connects existing payment systems so they can interoperate. It is not a coin, token, or blockchain, and you cannot buy it.
Does Mojaloop use ERC-20 tokens?
No. ERC-20 is a token standard on the Ethereum blockchain. Mojaloop is a payments interoperability layer and does not run on ERC-20. They are grouped together only because both demonstrate how a shared standard makes separate systems work together.
What is a wholesale CBDC used for?
A wholesale CBDC is central bank money in digital form used for settlement between financial institutions rather than for everyday retail spending. The Mojaloop CBDC use-case assessment highlighted wholesale CBDC for cross-border settlement as a leading application because that is where friction and cost are highest.
What did Project Hamilton prove?
Project Hamilton, run by the MIT Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, showed a hypothetical CBDC could process very high transaction volumes, reporting up to 1.7 million transactions per second in one architecture. It studied technical feasibility only and did not recommend that the United States issue a CBDC.
Which countries are in BIS Project Nexus?
The core Project Nexus partners are the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. In July 2024 they announced their intention to move toward a live cross-border payments network.
This content is educational only. It is not tax, legal, or investment advice. Check primary sources and speak with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
