The Philippines' Project Agila shows a wholesale CBDC can settle transfers around the clock
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas disclosed the results of Project Agila, a wholesale central bank digital currency pilot testing tokenized interbank transfers among six of the country's largest banks: BDO Unibank, China Banking Corporation, Land Bank of the Philippines, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, UnionBank of the Philippines and Maya Philippines. The pilot's core finding was that distributed ledger technology and tokenization can extend interbank payments beyond normal business hours, enabling genuine 24/7 settlement rather than the batch-window processing that conventional interbank rails rely on.
BSP Governor Eli M. Remolona Jr. said "wholesale CBDCs can enhance efficiency in the payments infrastructure and develop new financial services," and the central bank flagged tokenized financial-securities settlement and institutional cross-border payments as the recommended next areas of focus following the pilot.
Malaysia's Boost says its agentic AI platform now resolves 90% of banking enquiries without a human
Malaysian digital bank Boost said its agentic AI assistant, Boba Voice — launched in May — now handles 90% of incoming customer enquiries, with more than 80% resolved on first contact without escalation to a human agent, and response times cut to roughly three seconds. The company said more than 30,000 customers have interacted with Boba AI since January, generating close to 100,000 requests. Group CEO Sheyantha Abeykoon said "AI is moving beyond simply answering questions to actually getting work done."
The figures were released directly by Boost rather than through independent measurement, and near-identical write-ups of the same numbers ran across multiple Malaysian outlets in the same window — a pattern more consistent with a coordinated company disclosure than independently verified reporting.
Japan's MinebeaMitsumi commits US$360 million to AI data-centre bearings production in Cambodia or Thailand
Japan-listed MinebeaMitsumi said it will invest 58 billion yen (about US$360 million) to expand production capacity by 30% for precision bearings used in cooling equipment and storage devices inside AI data centres, with the new capacity built within an existing manufacturing complex in either Cambodia or Thailand. The company has not yet disclosed which of the two sites it will select.
The investment sits one step removed from the data-centre announcements this brief and its predecessors have covered — it is not a chip, a campus or a cloud contract, but the industrial hardware supply chain those campuses depend on for thermal management at scale.
Eyes on the Day Ahead
Over the next few days, watch for BSP to disclose a timeline for the tokenized-securities-settlement phase flagged as Project Agila's next focus. In Malaysia, track whether Bank Negara Malaysia or a competing digital bank responds to Boost's agentic-AI disclosure with its own adoption figures or, alternatively, supervisory commentary on AI-handled customer service. And watch for MinebeaMitsumi to confirm its Cambodia-versus-Thailand site decision, the detail that will determine which country captures the associated jobs and follow-on supplier investment.
Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.
