BIS and the central banks of France, Singapore and Switzerland announced the successful completion of a new CBDC initiative called Project Mariana. 🌐 This project tested cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC) between financial institutions. 🏦

BIS Innovation Centers, in collaboration with Banque de France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Swiss National Bank, have successfully validated the trading and settlement of notional euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss franc wCBDCs. 💱

The inclusion of DeFi technology could pave the way for next-generation financial market infrastructures. However, this is only an experimental phase and BIS, together with its partners, aims to further explore the opportunities and barriers to CBDC and related technologies. 🧪

Last year, BIS completed a cross-border digital currency pilot in cooperation with other central banks in Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, mainland China and the United Arab Emirates. Participation in this year's CBDC test marks BIS's advances in using blockchain for settlements. But more experiments and trials will continue. 🚀