The Swiss and French central banks concluded a test exploring digital central bank money. The Swiss National Bank insists however that it is not issuing a digital currency anytime soon.
The Swiss and French central banks and the Bank for International Settlements have successfully completed an experiment in cross-border settlement of wholesale digital currencies, or CBDCs, in collaboration with an Accenture-led consortium, the Swiss National Bank in a statement.
The experiment, called Project Jura and involving SIX's digital exchange, Credit Suisse, and UBS, tested the feasibility of cross-border settlement of two CBDCs on blockchain.
Specifically, the central banks explored exchanging a financial instrument against a euro wholesale CBDC via a delivery-versus-payment mechanism of settlement, as well as a euro wholesale CBDC against a Swiss franc wholesale CBDC.
Fast and Efficient
«Project Jura shows that wCBDC can offer a secure, fast and efficient way to use central bank money in settling international foreign exchange and securities transactions on a single production-grade platform,» SIX CEO Jos Dijsselhof, said in the statement.
Separately, the Bank of England’s Tom Mutton who is in charge of fintech, was less optimistic about the realization of the payment method. Mutton said at a Reuters panel earlier this week that a CBDC rollout could not be expected until the second half of the decade, «Financial News» reported.
