According to a press release, Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, is collaborating with its counterparts in Israel and Norway as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to test instant payments using retail cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC).
According to a press release, the “Project Icebreaker” program will run through the end of the year, with a final report anticipated in the first quarter of 2023.
According to Beju Shah, head of the BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Center, “This first-of-a-kind experiment will dig deeper into the technology, architecture, and design choices and trade-offs and explore related policy questions,” For central banks considering implementing CBDCs for cross-border payments, these lessons will be priceless.
The fourth cross-border CBDC project in which BIS has taken part is “Project Icebreaker.” The other three projects are mBridge, Project Dunbar, and Project Jura.
A BIS consultant reported on Tuesday that the central banks of Hong Kong, mainland China, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates had completed the pilot of the cross-border CBDC project mBridge, which saw the execution of foreign exchange deals worth more than US$22 million.
According to data from the Atlantic Council, ten countries have fully rolled out CBDC, and 105 countries, representing more than 95% of the global GDP, are currently exploring the concept. The think tank also noted that the next issue to be resolved for smooth cross-border payments could be interoperability between CBDCs.
