The Block: France's central bank selects eight candidates for digital currency experiments

The Banque de France, France's central bank, revealed Monday that it had selected eight applicants as part of a wide-ranging effort to test digital currency solutions.

In a July 20 statement, the central bank said that the experiments would cover a number of areas — though notably not the realm of crypto-asset transfer — and would commence "in the coming days." The list of candidates includes several major banks among other firms:

Accenture Euroclear HSBC Iznes LiquidShare ProsperUS Seba Bank Societe Generale's Forge "The experiments proposed by the selected candidates will allow (i) to explore new methods of exchanging financial instruments (excluding crypto-assets) for central bank money, (ii) to test the regulation in digital central bank money in order to improve the conditions for carrying out cross-border payments and (iii) revisit the arrangements for making central bank money available," the Banque said in a translated statement.

The Block previously reported on the French central bank's testing of a digital euro . The Banque du France conducted that experiment with Societe Generale, one of the new program's participants. Societe Generale has pursued a number of blockchain-focused projects, including the tokenization of assets, as reported by The Block's Yogita Khatri .

In its July 20 statement, the Banque de France noted (as translated): "The lessons learned from these experiments will constitute a direct contribution to the more global reflection led by the Eurosystem on the interest of a central bank digital currency."