BIS Innovation Hub and central banks of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa develop experimental multi-CBDC platform for international settlements

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank announced Tuesday the completion of prototypes for a common platform enabling international settlements using multiple central bank digital currencies (mCBDCs). Led by the Innovation Hub’s Singapore Centre, Project Dunbar proved that financial institutions could use CBDCs issued by participating central banks to transact directly with each other on a shared platform. This has the potential to reduce reliance on intermediaries and correspondingly, the costs and time taken to process cross-border transactions.