A consortium of institutions led by Euroclear have successfully experimented central bank digital currency (CBDC) for settling French treasury bonds on a test blockchain.
The experiment, commissioned by the Banque de France, included Agence France Trésor, BNP Paribas CIB, Crédit Agricole CIB and HSBC, Societe Generale. IBM provided Euroclear with design expertise and all platform features, including advanced privacy-preserving tokens and hybrid cloud capabilities.
The aim was to assess if a wide range of operations and functionalities can be run on a blockchain platform and identify, from a user point of view, the added value of blockchain technology.
The trial covered a large range of core securities settlement operations including securities issuance, primary market and secondary market trades, liquidity optimisation mechanisms like repo and interest payments.
It demonstrated that a blockchain platform can coexist and interoperate with existing market infrastructure.
The experiment is part of a wider Banque de France initiative commissioned in March 2020, to test the integration of a CBDC using innovative procedures for the exchange and settlement of tokenised financial assets between financial intermediaries. It also acted as the Central Bank issuing and distributing the CBDC.
Isabelle Delorme, Deputy CEO of ESES CSDs Euroclear France, Euroclear Belgium and Euroclear Nederland said, “We are extremely pleased to have worked on this pioneering project with our industry partners and the Banque de France. Together, we have been able to measure the degree to which the issuance of CBDC can offer fast and secure settlement of tokenised securities.”
She added, “We are well aware that there are still challenges that need to be overcome before we can envisage the implementation of blockchain platforms in production as we continue to investigate all routes to drive efficiencies for our clients.”
©Markets Media Europe 2021
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