BIS and four central banks hail pilot trials of CBDCs in cross-border FX transactions

BIS and four central banks hail pilot trials of CBDCs in cross-border FX transactions

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and four central banks have completed a successful pilot of the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by commercial banks for foreign exchange transactions across borders, as part of Project mBridge.

The BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre joined forces with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates for the trials, which saw 20 banks in the four jurisdictions use the mBridge platform to conduct 164 payment and foreign exchange transactions totalling over $22 million over six weeks, settled directly on the platform.

The experiment was designed to operate across different jurisdictions and currencies, to explore the capabilities of distributed ledger technology and the application of CBDC in cross-border