BIS expects limited‑scale Agorá pilots by early 2026; J.P. Morgan plans to open Kinexys to third‑party banks later this year; Circle is lobbying U.S. regulators to let federally chartered banks hold USDC as cash equivalents. The race is now about reach. The prize is enormous: McKinsey puts annual cross‑border friction at US $120 billion. Trim even a third and the savings rival the revenue of a top‑ten global bank. No wonder both sides are spending heavily on standards bodies, custody integrations and developer toolkits. Real‑world proofs of concept are multiplying. Under Project Guardian, MAS is exploring smart contracts that bundle both legs of an SGD‑USD swap so settlement is instantaneous and counter-party risk diminishes. Kinexys now supports conditional logic, release payment when IoT sensors confirm delivery, while Circle’s new network lets a multinational pay suppliers on Solana, collect receipts on Stellar and sweep surplus to a regulated custodian in New York. Trade‑finance platforms are testing tokenized deposits as real‑time collateral for letters‑of‑credit. Whether banks or fintech issuers capture the lion’s share will depend on who can scale liquidity, satisfy regulators and embed programmable dollars into everyday commerce first. The quiet war for the money pipes is already under way, and while consumers may never see the plumbing, the savings, or losses, will flow straight through corporate balance‑sheets.