Singapore's central bank will join counterparts from Australia, Malaysia and South Africa to test the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for international settlements.
Led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub in Singapore, Project Dunbar aims to develop prototype shared platforms for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs, BIS said in an announcement on Thursday.
This will allow direct transactions between institutions, reducing costs and increasing speed. The project will develop technical prototypes on different distributed ledger technology platforms with various partners, and will also explore different governance and operating designs that will enable central banks to share CBDC infrastructures.
Next-Gen Payments
BIS said it hopes the project will inform the development of future platforms for global and regional settlements, and expects to publish results in early 2022. It will also showcase prototypes at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2021.
«The findings on how a common platform can be governed effectively and managed efficiently will shape the blueprint of the next generation payment systems,» Sopnendu Mohanty, MAS chief fintech officer, said in the announcement.
