As part of an experimental programme led by the Banque de France, more than ten transactions on fund units, for a total amount of more than €2 million, were carried out in December 2020 on a blockchain-based mututal funds platform from IZNES using central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The pilot, conducted in collaboration with SETL, Citi, CACEIS, Groupama AM, OFI AM and DXC, marks the first settlement of fund units using CBDC.
The initiative is one of a number of different experiments underway at the Banque de France on potential applications for a central bank digital currency in interbank settlements.
For this project, SETL provided the DLT technology as well as the technology behind the issuance and redemption of CBDC tokens, in liaison with the technology team of the Banque de France and IZNES. DXC supervised the security issues.
Citi and CACEIS acted as commercial banks to use CBDC tokens created by the Banque de France. CACEIS also acted as custodian of the "Groupama Entreprises" fund. Groupama AM acted as fund manager, while OFI AM and SETL acted as proprietary investors.
Elsewhere in Europe, Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) and Deutsche Börse’s post-trade services provider Clearstream successfully processed their first live blockchain-based end-to-end fund transactions, using FundsDLT, a decentralised platform for fund transaction processing. The project, which entailed an end investor placing a fund transaction request via a mobile app directly on the private blockchain, reduced the overall processing time from the placing of the order to confirmation from several hours to only a few minutes.