The Bank for Inetrnational Settlements, working in conjunction with the Swiss National Bank and SIX has successfully tested the integration of wholesale CBDC settlement with the core banking systems of five commercial banks.
Carried out during the fourth quarter of 2021, the experiment explored the settlement of interbank, monetary policy and cross-border transactions on the test systems of SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the Swiss real-time gross settlement system - SIX Interbank Clearing (SIC) - and the core banking systems of Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and UBS.
The test was conducted as part of Project Helvetia, an ongoing investigation into the settlement of tokenised assets with wCBDC
Integrating a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) into existing core banking systems is complex and a key prerequisite for issuance.
Phase II of Project Helvetia successfully demonstrates that such integration is operationally possible, says Benoît Cœuré, head of the BIS Innovation Hub.
“We have demonstrated that innovation can be harnessed to preserve the best elements of the current financial system, including settlement in central bank money, while also potentially unlocking new benefits,” he says. “As DLT goes mainstream, this will become more relevant than ever.”