Europe is one step closer to the integration of an official central bank digital currency (CBDC). Currently, the Bank of France (BoF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) have concluded a very crucial set of studies and tests on the wholesale usage of a CBDC- a series of international settlements were conducted between financial institutions.
The announcement was revealed this Wednesday, in which the banks disclosed further details. The institutions settled FX transactions in EUR and CHF CBDC’s under the umbrella term Project Jura. The banks essentially transferred, issued, and redeemed a tokenized version of the Euro.
Project Jura- essentially the name of the CBDC trials that were conducted- was announced in June this year, and is spearheaded by BIS, although the bank has other CBDC-based projects. Chief of the BIS Innovation Hub, Benoît Cœuré, said this when asked about Project Jura, “Project Jura confirms that a well-designed wholesale CBDC can play a critical role as a safe and neutral settlement asset for international financial transactions.”
The wholesale CBDC trials also saw help from major private companies such as UBS, Credit Suisse, SIX Digital Exchange, and Accenture. Moreover, third party owned DLT platforms were used by the French and Swiss banks to explore direct EUR and CHF CBDCs transfers.
