The central banks of Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, and Singapore have declared to initiate a mutual trial of CBDCs (central-bank-digital-currencies) for their international settlements. The initiative is entitled Project Dunbar, and it will co-relate the shared platforms by allowing straightforward transfers among the institutions utilizing digital currencies launched by several central banks. The results of the pilot will be utilized to provide the statistics about the progress of regional as well as the global platforms along with assisting the G20’s framework regarding the advancement of cross-border payments.
Project Dunbar is planned to be accomplished in association with the Singapore Center of Innovation Hub of BIS (Bank-for-International-Settlements). Multiple partners will be included by the project for constructing various DLT platforms as well as exploring several schemes to permit the central banks to share the infrastructure of CBDCs. A collaborative declaration focuses on the enhanced efficiency savings along with the low costs for remittances through payments based on DLT (distributed-ledger-technology).
The announcement stated that the incorporation of participant CBDC platforms would permit the financial institutions to transfer amounts straightly with each other via digital currencies launched by the member central banks, and there would be no requirement for any intermediary; thus, a lot of cost and time will be saved. Michele Bullock, the Reserve-Bank-of-Australia’s assistant governor, pointed out that the worldwide regulatory community prioritizes the expansion of cross-border payments. She added that the RBA (Reserve-Bank-of-Australia) is much concentrated on the effectiveness of its domestic policy regarding the matter.
The BIS-Innovation-Hub-Singapore-Centre’s head ‘Andre McCormack’ revealed that Project Dunbar creates a link between the central banks which have many years of experience. These banks have their perceptions about the CBDC programs as well as the ecosystem partners that stand on the higher levels of technical progress in digital currencies. He further disclosed that the group is much hopeful about the groundbreaking performance of the program for multi-CBDCs because the partners thereof are passionate and capable. This latest level of CBDC pilot will provide a basis for global connectivity of payments.
Previously, RBA has not seen much success in meeting its requirement for a local CBDC. Nonetheless, the recent success regarding the latest payments platform will support it throughout the 24-hours every day. It is expected that Project Dunbar will begin in November. Its complete findings are anticipated to be published at the start of 2022.
