The central banks of Israel, Norway, and Sweden collaborate with BIS to investigate CBDC payments

With a final report anticipated in the first quarter of 2023, Project Icebreaker aims to enhance cross-border payments by cutting costs and boosting speed and transparency.

The BIS announced on September 28 that the bank’s Innovation Hub Nordic Centre would examine the essential functionality and technical viability of interconnecting domestic CBDC systems as part of Project Icebreaker. The central banks will create a new hub that will allow the Central Bank of Norway, the Bank of Israel, and the Sveriges Riksbank to link their CBDC proof-of-concept systems.

The director of the Innovation Hub Nordic Centre, Beju Shah, said that the experiment would investigate CBDC concepts and architecture, as well as policy problems linked to CBDCs. A final report was planned for the first quarter of 2023. The initiative sought to enhance cross-border payments utilizing CBDCs by decreasing costs and boosting speed and transparency.

A CBDC pilot including the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, China, and the United Arab Emirates was deemed “successful” by the BIS on September 27 following a month-long test that facilitated $22 million in cross-border transactions. As announced in September 2021 by the central banks of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Africa, several nations’ central banks have undertaken measures aimed at boosting cross-border settlements.

The Central Bank of Norway, the Bank of Israel, and the Sveriges Riksbank have all contemplated the advantages of implementing their various CBDCs, while China reportedly extended the testing of its digital yuan to a greater portion of the nation in September. In the United States, politicians and regulators have explored the digital dollar in a variety of ways, and in March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order mandating that government departments and agencies investigate the merits and hazards of a CBDC.

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