Saudi Central Bank joins mBridge for CBDC cross-border trade

Project mBridge was launched in 2021 as a collaboration between the BIS’ innovation arm and the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to test the viability of CBDCs for instantaneous cross-border trade and other payments using the project’s blockchain, the mBridge Ledger.

Major global financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and China’s six biggest state-owned banks, are also working on the project.

In addition to mBridge’s six full participants, 27 other official entities – including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the central banks of countries including Norway, South Korea, and Turkey – have signed on as observers to the project, giving them access to a ‘sandbox’ for experimentation with the technology.

Achieving MVP stage

The Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced that Project mBridge has, after three years, reached the minimum viable product (MVP) stage and has requested private sector financial firms to ‘propose new solutions and use cases that help develop the platform and showcase all its potential.’

Reaching the MPV means for mBridge that its multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform is now a functional prototype ready for further testing and improvement. Built on distributed ledger technology (DLT), the platform is designed to enable instant cross-border payments and settlements among participating central banks and commercial banks, showcasing the core functionalities needed to meet the project's objectives.

Initiated in 2021, Project mBridge is a collaborative effort between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, with the recent addition of the Saudi Central Bank as a full participant. Achieving the MVP stage involved rigorous testing and the deployment of validating nodes by the founding central banks, as well as numerous real-value transactions by commercial banks to ensure platform readiness.