BIS Hub and Central Banks Collaborate on Multi-CBDC Platform

This project, known as the Project Dunbar, explores how a common platform for multiple central bank digital currencies could enable cheaper, faster, and safer cross-border payments. The project is organized along three workstreams: one focusing on high-level functional requirements and design and two concurrent technical streams that developed prototypes on different technological platforms (Corda and Partior). This project was led by the BIS Innovation Hub's Singapore Center and other participating regulatory authorities include the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).

The project's findings affirmed that any such arrangement should be subject to the governance deemed appropriate by central bank participants, including allowing them to retain control of the application of rules on a jurisdictional and currency level. The findings also suggest areas for further exploration that could be broadly categorized into three themes: policy, business, and technology. As a next step, the Project Dunbar will develop and test a regional multi-CBDC platform to a high level of production fidelity. Once such multi-CBDC projects have been established on a regional level, the next step would be to develop mechanisms to ensure connectivity between these multi-CBDC projects and experiments.

Related Links

• Press Release
• Report (PDF)

Keywords: International, CBDC, Multi-CBDC, Banking, Cross-Border Payments, MAS, BIS, Asia Pacific, Singapore, Innovation Hub, Regtech, Suptech, Blockchain, FMI