French, Swiss central banks to experiment with CBDCs for cross-border payments

France’s and Switzerland’s central banks, along with the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, announced Thursday the commencement of wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) experimentation for international payments, according to a release.

“The Eurosystem is engaging in innovation and adapting its actions to the strong trend towards the digitalization of payments. The Banque de France is convinced of the potential benefits of wholesale central bank digital currency to provide maximum security and efficiency in financial transactions,” Deputy Governor of the Banque de France Sylvie Goulard said in the statement.

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Specifically, the cross border payments will occur between France and Switzerland banks.  While the CBDC testing process commences, the statement also makes clear that the experiment does not suggest either the French or Swiss Central banks will publicly release a CBDC anytime soon.

This news comes months after France’s central bank, Banque de France, transacted with its own CBDC, and appears to be on time with its prior plans to conduct use case tests with its CBDC, which were supposed to occur this spring.

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MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.