Banque de France has included SEBA Bank, a FINMA licenced Swiss Bank, as one of eight organisations offering potential solutions. The objective is to assist with experiments involving international settlements and a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). SEBA Bank believes its inclusion comes because of its pilot project on how to distribute and use CBDCs for cross-border payments to improve the functioning of financial markets.
“We at SEBA Bank are very proud of this achievement, and to be selected by Banque de France honors us. It is a proof of concept that our service offering and deep expertise of the industry is of great value and a relevant contribution to develop the eco system of digital currencies and assets,” states Guido Bühler, SEBA Bank’s CEO.
Banque de France selected candidates
Following an assessment of the applications received in May 2020 – in response to the call for applications for experiments in interbank settlements – the Banque has selected the following eight companies (in alphabetical order):
- Accenture
- Euroclear
- HSBC
- Iznes
- LiquidShare
- ProsperUS
- SEBA Bank
- Société Générale.
The Banque de France experimentation
The Banque will start to collaborate with each of the eight candidates to carry out the pilot projects over the coming months. The experiments proposed by the successful candidates will enable:
- exploration of new methods for exchanging financial instruments against central bank money
- testing of the regulation in central bank digital money (to improve the conditions of execution of cross-border payments)
- revisiting of the methods of making central bank money available.
The lessons learned from the Banque de France’s experiments will contribute to a better understanding:
- for the ‘Eurosystem
- of the possible benefits of a CBDC.
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
The notion of CDBCs has been around for some time. Other projects include:
- the Bank of Canada’s Project Jaspar
- the Bank of Thailand’s Project Inthanon
- Project Ubin (from Singapore)
- Project Stella (the ECB).
All these experiments, with the Banque de France’s CDBC initiative, represent a commitment to innovation in the central banking environment. It is also relevant that the Banque, along with the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank, is hosting a joint European innovation centre within the framework of the Innovation Hub of the Bank for International Settlements.
