Atomic Settlement
Settlement in which every linked transfer in a transaction completes together, or none of them do.
In conventional markets, the two legs of a trade — the asset and the cash — often move through different systems at different times. That gap creates principal risk: one party can deliver while the other has not yet paid.
Atomic settlement removes the gap by making the linked transfers a single, indivisible operation on a programmable ledger. If any condition fails, the whole transaction reverts. The term comes from computing, where an 'atomic' operation cannot be partially executed.
For institutions, the interest is less about speed and more about certainty: atomicity can reduce the need for pre-funding, collateral buffers and reconciliation between separate books. It also raises new questions, because instant, irrevocable settlement changes how liquidity must be managed during the day.
In practice
- BIS research describes atomic settlement as one of the core capabilities of a unified ledger that holds tokenized money and assets side by side.
- Wholesale central bank money experiments, including those coordinated by the BIS Innovation Hub, test atomic exchange of tokenized assets against tokenized central bank reserves.
Primary sources
- Annual Economic Report 2025, Chapter III ↗BIS
- The Next-Generation Monetary and Financial SystemBank for International Settlements, 2025
- BIS Innovation Hub ↗Bank for International Settlements
Related concepts
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An independent TokenShares explainer. Informational only; the cited publications are the authoritative sources.