French and Swiss Central Banks to Conduct CBDC Experiment

Fazzaco learned that the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of France and the Swiss National Bank announced they will conduct an experiment using wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC) for cross-border settlement together with a private sector consortium led by Accenture.

The private sector consortium includes Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS.

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Known as Project Jura, the experiment will explore cross-border settlement with two wCBDCs and a French digital financial instrument on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. It will involve the exchange of the financial instrument against a euro wCBDC through a delivery versus payment (DvP) settlement mechanism and the exchange of a euro wCBDC against a Swiss franc wCBDC through a payment versus payment (PvP) settlement mechanism. These transactions will be settled between banks domiciled in France and in Switzerland, respectively.

Project Jura expands on central bank experimentation investigating the effectiveness of wCBDC for cross-border settlement. It is of exploratory nature and should not be interpreted as an indication that the Bank of France or the Swiss National Bank plan to issue wCBDCs.

Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, commented: “The G20 has made enhancing cross-border payments a priority and laid out a multi-year roadmap to coordinate efforts. The experiment contributes to this work by exploring how wCBDC could enhance speed, efficiency and transparency in cross-border use cases. The BIS Innovation Hub facilitates central bank experimentation into technological public goods. We are excited to join this project, which complements other CBDC experiments that we are working on.”