The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is cooperating with several countries to test the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for international settlements.
In participation are the central banks of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. The experiment could lead to a more efficient global payments platform.
Led by BIS’ Singapore Center, “Project Dunbar” aims to develop prototype shared platforms for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs. This would allow financial institutions to transact directly with each other using the digital currencies. Consequently, this would eliminate the need for intermediaries and cut the time and cost of transactions. BIS said that they would likely published the results of the study next year.“We are confident that our work on multi-CBDCs for international settlements will break new ground in this next stage of CBDC experimentation and lay the foundation for global payments connectivity,” said head of the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Center Andrew McCormack.