Share this article

Bank of France, Swiss National Bank Begin Cross-Border CBDC Experiment

The banks will experiment with cross-border settlements of two wholesale CBDCs and a French digital financial instrument on a distributed ledger technology platform.

Geneva, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland

The Bank of France and the Swiss National Bank are starting a joint cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiment dubbed “Project Jura.” It will focus on the bank-to-bank wholesale lending market, not public transactions.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

  • In an announcement Thursday, the Swiss National Bank said it will work with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and a “private sector consortium” led by Accenture, to experiment with wholesale CBDCs for cross-border settlement.
  • The private sector consortium of companies includes the Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange, and UBS.
  • The Swiss National Bank said it has already been investigating tokenized assets with wholesale CBDC.
  • Project Jura will experiment with cross-border settlements of two wholesale CBDCs and a French digital financial instrument on a distributed ledger technology platform.
  • The transaction will involve the exchange of the financial instrument against a euro wholesale CBDC through a delivery (rather than payment) settlement mechanism, and the exchange of a euro wholesale CBDC against a Swiss franc wholesale CBDC through a payment versus payment settlement mechanism, said the Swiss National Bank.
  • The transactions will be settled between banks domiciled in France and in Switzerland.

Read more: South Korea’s Central Bank to Choose Supplier for Digital Currency Pilot

Tanzeel Akhtar

Tanzeel Akhtar has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes Africa, Financial Times, The Street, Citywire, Investing.com, Euromoney, Yahoo! Finance, Benzinga, Kitco News, African Business Magazine, Hedge Week, Campden Family Office, Modern Investor, Spear's Wealth Management Magazine, Global Investor, ETF.com, ETF Stream, CIO UK, Funds Global Asia, Portfolio Institutional, Interactive Investor, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoNews.com, Bitcoin.com, The Local, The Next Web, Mining Journal, Money Marketing, Marketing Week and more. Tanzeel trained as a foreign correspondent at the University of Helsinki, Finland and newspaper journalist at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She holds a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and completed a semester abroad as an ERASMUS student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is NCTJ Qualified - Media Law, Public Administration and passed the Shorthand 100WPM with distinction. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.

Tanzeel Akhtar