BdF, SNB and BIS complete Project Jura cross-border wCBDC experiment

Banque de France (BdF), Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Innovation Hub have successfully completed Project Jura, an experiment in cross-border wholesale CBDC, in collaboration with Accenture, Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS.

Project Jura successfully explored cross-border settlement of tokenised assets in wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) enabled platform.

It involved delivery versus payment (DvP) of a tokenised commercial paper issued under French law against a EUR wCBDC and a payment versus payment (PvP) of a EUR wCBDC against a CHF wCBDC. These transactions were settled between banks domiciled in France, and in Switzerland.

This project is a public-private collaboration led by the BdF, BIS Innovation Hub Swiss Centre and the SNB. The private sector side consists of a consortium led by Accenture and includes Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) and UBS.

Project Jura is novel in two ways. First, it tests a new approach to promote secure, fast and efficient cross-border settlements by extending the safety of central bank money to cross-border settlements between resident and non-resident financial institutions using multiple wCBDCs.

Second, it shows a new approach that may give central banks comfort to issue wCBDC on a third-party platform with separate sub-networks and to allow regulated non-resident financial institutions access to wCBDC.

The experiment involved real-value payments and settlements under the existing legal and regulatory frameworks.

“Project Jura shows that wCBDC can offer a secure, fast and efficient way to use central bank money in settling international FX and securities transactions on a single production-grade platform, comments Jos Dijsselhof, CEO SIX. “We are excited to be part of this pioneering project”

Project Jura is part of a series of CBDC experiments announced by the BdF in July 2020 and continues the wCBDC experimentation by the SNB and BIS Innovation Hub initiated with Project Helvetia. The experiment is of exploratory nature and should not be interpreted as an indication that the BdF or the SNB plan to issue wCBDCs.

Further information about Project Jura is available in this  detailed report.

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