The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Bank of Thailand, Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, and the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China have published a report on the completed pilot of the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by commercial banks for real-value transactions across borders.

Project mBridge, which involved 20 banks in Hong Kong, Thailand, mainland China and the United Arab Emirates, successfully conducted 164 payment and foreign exchange transactions totalling over US$22 million (HK$171 million).

The six-week pilot held in Q3 2022 is the largest cross-border CBDC pilot to date and among the first multi-CBDC projects to settle real-value, cross-border transactions on behalf of corporates.

Project mBridge envisions an efficient, low-cost, regulatory-compliant and scalable cross-border payment solution with CBDC at its core. BIS is expected to present the mBridge pilot at the upcoming Hong Kong Fintech Week.

Going forward, the HKMA and the rest of the project team will continue to work towards developing the mBridge platform into a minimum viable product and ultimately a production-ready system.

“The HKMA is very pleased to have completed the pilot successfully together with the BISIH and fellow co-founding members of Project mBridge.

 

We sincerely hope that the central banking community will find our pilot insights useful to their own exploration for using CBDC to expedite cross-border payments, and encourage them to join Project mBridge either as an observer or participant to maximise the network effect and realise the potential of the project to the fullest,”

said Howard Lee, Deputy Chief Executive of the HKMA.