Bank of Canada to start using blockchain technology

However, the bank’s representatives said that there are no plans to issue a digitized Canadian dollar or conduct tests dealing with public money.

The Bank of Canada, in conjunction with New York-based startup R3 CEV, said it has taken part in a “proof of concept” experiment using blockchain technology, which is a distributed-ledger system that is billed as being more open, transparent and flexible than existing databases widely used in banking.

Others involved in the project included Payments Canada, which owns and operates the country’s payment-clearing and settlement infrastructure, and Canadian commercial banks with the aim of solely to better understand the technology firsthand.

Bank of Canada officials told Canadian lawmakers in 2014 that digital currency was a “strategic priority” for the bank, and at the time it planned encourage research efforts to understand the use of digital currency and its implications.