CENTRAL BANKS TO CONDUCT DIGITAL CURRENCY EXPERIMENTS

The French and Swiss Central Banks are testing the use of digital currency for cross-border exchanges.

Experiments continue with the aim of verifying the real potential of digital currency.

In Europe, England, Norway and Sweden are at the forefront.

In England, a task force has been set up to study any strengths and weaknesses of CBDC.

In Norway, since 2018, they have been studying this opportunity, with Norges Bank that has planned a study group that over the next two years will carry out tests in order to understand if the issue of a digital currency is appropriate.

Sweden through the Riksbank launched a project in the spring of 2017 to examine the possibilities for the creation of a CBDC that could ensure citizens have access to state-guaranteed means of payment.

In these two countries, they want to take advantage of how keen the population is on this change, considering that Scandinavian nations see only 4% of payments made using banknotes or coins.

Now it’s the turn of the Swiss National Bank and Banque de France who have announced a trial employing wholesale central bank digital coins (wholesale CBDC) for cross-border settlement.

The operation will be carried out together with a private sector consortium led by Accenture and including Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS.

Called Project Jura, like the mountain ranges that separate France and Switzerland, the initiative will assess the potential benefits and challenges of digital currency in the settlement of cross-border payments.

The experiment will explore cross-border settlement with digital versions of the euro and Swiss franc with a French digital financial instrument on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform.

Experiments continue with the stated goal for central banks to keep up with technological developments.