SWIFT starts developing a system for transferring national cryptocurrencies

Representatives of the international payment system SWIFT have announced the start of work on the national cryptocurrency transfer system (CBDC). The first testing of CBDC transactions was successful.

Central and commercial banks have seen «clear potential and value» in SWIFT’s national cryptocurrency transfer system. The French bank BNP Paribas, the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, and the British bank Standard Chartered (STAN), as well as the central banks of France and Singapore, took part in the testing of the transfers.

From now on, the digital national currencies project will move to the second stage of testing. «As interest in CBDC grows, so do the risks as we experiment with an expanding range of technologies ,» said Lewis Sun, global head of domestic and emerging payments at HSBC.

SWIFT reminded that more than 110 countries are currently exploring the possibility of launching their own CBDC. In addition, a recent survey by the OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute showed that almost a quarter of them plan to introduce CBDC projects over the next year.

As a reminder, back in September, SWIFT management signed an agreement with Chainlink to test payment transactions using different blockchains. For the initial proof of concept, SWIFT used the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). The cooperation between the two companies allowed financial institutions to use blockchain capabilities without developing new services.