SARB and Seven Banks Test DLT Wholesale Payments in Project Khokha

On June 5, 2018, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) formally published the findings of Project Khokha, its first major initiative under the SARB Fintech Unit established in August 2017. The 14-week proof-of-concept, running from January to April 2018, tested tokenized South African rand for interbank settlements on a distributed ledger technology platform. Seven sponsor banks participated: Absa, Capitec, Discovery Bank, FirstRand, Investec, Nedbank, and Standard Bank, with ConsenSys providing the technical DLT infrastructure and PwC offering consulting support.

The project achieved transaction processing speeds of up to 400,000 transactions per second in testing environments, demonstrating the potential for DLT to improve wholesale payment efficiency. Planning began in late 2017 with input from the South African Financial Blockchain Consortium (SAFBC), and the initiative aimed to build institutional knowledge on DLT without compromising financial stability. The successful outcome encouraged future SARB-led fintech collaborations and positioned South Africa as a leader in central bank blockchain experimentation.