This is yet another initiative around CBDCs, something that now accrues an announcement every other week. The news release is through Finextra and this particular effort is sponsored by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), involving the central banks of Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Australia. The initiative is a project around some sort of testing in cross-border settlements using CBDCs. We previously posted something earlier this year on a similar BIS initiative with several other central banks.
‘Dubbed Project Dunbar, the initiative will develop prototype shared platforms for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs, eliminating the need for intermediaries and cutting the time and cost of transactions….The project will work with multiple partners to develop technical prototypes on different distributed ledger technology platforms. It will also explore different governance and operating designs that would enable central banks to share CBDC infrastructures.’
So the piece is short on detail, but nonetheless suggests a continued focus on cross-border initiatives for CBDCs, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. As more detail becomes available, we will track.
‘Technical prototypes of the shared platforms will be demonstrated at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2021….Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at Monetary Authority of Singapore, says: “Project Dunbar’s work on using multi-CBDC platforms to facilitate seamless multi-currency fund transfers is a significant contribution to the global vision to make payments cheaper and faster. The findings on how a common platform can be governed effectively and managed efficiently will shape the blueprint of the next generation payment systems.” ‘
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
