• Project Jura explored settlement of tokenised euro commercial paper and foreign exchange transactions.
• Tests were conducted in a near real-life setting and met current regulatory requirements.
•  Jura studied a new approach for central banks to allow access to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for regulated non-resident financial institutions.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can be used effectively for international settlements between financial institutions, as shown in the newest wholesale CBDC experiment concluded by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Bank of France (BdF) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB). The recently completed Project Jura explored settling foreign exchange (FX) transactions in euro and Swiss franc wholesale CBDCs as well as issuing, transferring and redeeming a tokenised euro-denominated French commercial paper between French and Swiss financial institutions.

Project Jura was conducted in collaboration with a group of private sector firms comprising Accenture, Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS. It continues the experimentation conducted by the SNB and the BIS Innovation Hub under Project Helvetia and is part of a series of wholesale CBDC experiments initiated by the BdF in 2020.

The experiment explored the direct transfer of euro and Swiss franc wholesale CBDCs between French and Swiss commercial banks on a single distributed ledger technology platform operated by a third party. Tokenised assets and foreign exchange transactions were settled safely and efficiently using payment-versus-payment and delivery-versus-payment mechanisms. The experiment was conducted in a near-real setting, used real-value transactions and met current regulatory requirements.

Issuing wholesale CBDCs on a third-party platform and giving regulated non-resident financial institutions direct access to central bank money raises intricate policy issues. Jura explored a new approach including subnetworks and dual-notary signing, which may give central banks comfort to issue wholesale CBDCs on third-party platforms and to provide regulated non-resident financial institutions with access to wholesale CBDCs.

Project Jura contributes to the ongoing G20 work on cross-border payments. The experiment is of exploratory nature and should not be interpreted as an indication that the BdF or the SNB plan to issue wholesale CBDCs. 

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker