Banque de France completes the first phase of its CBDC experiments

This final experiment was jointly conducted with a group of private actors led by HSBC.

The experiment consisted in the issuance of a digital bond on a Blockchain and its subscription with a settlement in CBDC. The experiment successfully tested an end-to-end transactional lifecycle of digital assets, through issuance, subscription by several actors, and coupon payment involving a conversion into another currency. All those transactions occurred across different Blockchain environments operated by HSBC for the custody of the assets, and by the Banque de France for the securities settlement and the CBDC.

The communication across the different environments relies on several interoperability components developed specifically, and which represent the benefit of this experiment. They allowed the transfer of the data pertaining to the digital bond across chains, to trigger automatically and atomically the settlement and the accounting of the securities, cash and foreign exchange flows in the various environments, whilst guaranteeing that the Banque de France could control the usage of the central bank money.

All those operations were jointly conducted with HSBC and its technology partner IBM, members of the group of actors specifically established for this experiment.

The Banque de France will proceed with its CBDC experimentation programme, which second tranche will be mainly dedicated to cross-border transactions.