BIS mBridge cross-border CBDC project concludes pilot, advisor says

Hong Kong’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) project with three other central banks and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has completed its pilot, an advisor from the BIS and a specialist from Thailand’s central bank said on Tuesday.

See related article: Future of CBDCs & Stablecoins

Fast facts

The mBridge pilot saw 20 commercial banks in four participating jurisdictions conduct over 160 cross-border real-value payments and transactions worth over US$22 million, BIS advisor Daniel Eidan said in a LinkedIn post.
Tayo Tunyathon K., a senior specialist of Bank of Thailand who works on the country’s CBDC projects, also announced in a Tuesday social media post that the pilot had been completed.
The mBridge, or mCBDC, is a collaborative CBDC project between the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the central banks of Thailand, China, the United Arab Emirates and the BIS to enhance multi-currency cross-border payments.

The mBridge pilot project was designed to help different architecture components “scale to more participants and to a production volume of transaction,” the BIS said in the June report.
The HKMA, Hong Kong’s de-facto central bank, said last week it would likely take at least two or three years to build the wholesale system for the city’s CBDC.
The BIS will publish a detailed report on the project in October, according to Eidan.