Banque de France, the French central bank, has successfully completed its 10-month trial using Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) in the country’s debt market.
The trial was led by Euroclear, a Belgium-based financial services company that specialises in the settlement of securities transactions. The trial also included many of France’s largest banks, as well as the French public debt office and the central bank, which used a permissioned blockchain-based system developed by IBM on Hyperledger Fabric.
We have together successfully been able to measure the inherent benefits of this technology, concluding that the CBDC can settle central bank money safely and securely.
Isabelle Delorme, Euroclear executive Tweet this
According to the report released by Euroclear, the pilot was launched in March 2020 by Banque de France to explore the uses of a digital currency issued by the central bank. The continued research and development of a CBDC for the settlement of government bonds and securities has been adjudged a success, according to Euroclear:
It showed that CBDC can be effectively used to support the settlement of securities in central bank money and that it is possible to run post-trade operations for an activity as critical for the capital markets as the management of OATs [order audit trail system].
