SWIFT Enters The Second Phase CBDC Test, Includes Trade Settlements

The giant banking network SWIFT aims to introduce more CBDC payment settlements cases with the help of CBDC in near future.

At present almost 114 countries’ Central Banks are working on the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs), a next-level concept of the digital form of fiat currency. To this date, around 10 countries are already testing their fully developed CBDC. Every different central bank introduced its unique CBDC model & framework in different ways, to fight against the conflict between CBDC & traditional digital payment systems. 

SWIFT, a giant banking network, was also already testing its system focussed on the CBDC payment system. Now, this Banking network is entering the second phase of CBDC payment testing.

Under this project, there are many countries’ agencies like France’s BNP Paribas, Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo, and the U.K.’s Standard Chartered (STAN), as well as the central banks in France and Singapore.

In the second phase of CBDC payment testing, SWIFT will test CBDC payment in the settlement of trade finance and securities settlement.

Lewis Sun, global head of domestic and emerging payments at HSBC, noted that an increment in development works on CBDCs in the world is forcing us to establish a new framework & design standards with several experiments to ensure the best possible use case.

CBDC challenges

In the past couple of months, a few Central banks reported that they are in fear of the CBDC concept, despite a better-designed framework use. 

Few of the Central banks are facing technical challenges to develop the best form of CBDC, more efficient & best over existing traditional digital payment systems.

Recently San Francisco headquartered fintech company Ripple stated that there are more than 20 Central Banks that are in contact with the Ripple team to get technical guidance to develop CBDC. 

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