PETALING JAYA: Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Monetary Authority of Singapore and South African Reserve Bank will join forces to test the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for international settlements.
Led by the Innovation Hub’s Singapore Centre, Project Dunbar aims to develop prototype shared platforms for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs. These multi-CBDC platforms will allow financial institutions to transact directly with each other in the digital currencies issued by participating central banks, eliminating the need for intermediaries and cutting the time and cost of transactions.
The project will work with multiple partners to develop technical prototypes on different distributed ledger technology platforms. It will also explore different governance and operating designs that would enable central banks to share CBDC infrastructures, benefitting from the collaboration between public and private sector experts in different jurisdictions and areas of operation.
Project Dunbar’s work will explore the international dimension of CBDC design and support the efforts of the G20 roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. Its results, expected to be published in early 2022, will inform the development of future platforms for global and regional settlements. Technical prototypes of the shared platforms developed in collaboration with different technology partners will be demonstrated at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2021.
“The multi-CBDC shared platform explored under Project Dunbar has the potential to leapfrog the legacy payment arrangements and serve as a foundation for a more efficient international settlement platform. We hope the project will spur greater public-private collaboration to enable fast and frictionless cross-border payments, combining both the benefits of distributed ledger technology and the efficiency of a common platform,” said BNM assistant governor Fraziali Ismail.
