The Bank for International Settlements (“BIS”) published a report on a platform enabling real-time transactions using central bank digital currencies (“CBDC”).
The report was co-created by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China, and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates. These entities are working together to create mBridge, an international platform for CBDC exchange, based on distributed ledger technology.
Currently, the delay between payment and settlement for a typical cross-border transaction is 3 to 5 days. According to the authors of the report, when using the mBridge platform, the delay will be from 2 to 10 seconds. In addition, the platform is expected to provide greater security compared to ordinary cross-border transactions, and to reduce the cost of settlements.