The Bank for International Settlements has enlisted the central banks of Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Australia to test the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for international settlements.
Dubbed Project Dunbar, the initiative will develop prototype shared platforms for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs, eliminating the need for intermediaries and cutting the time and cost of transactions. The project will work with multiple partners to develop technical prototypes on different distributed ledger technology platforms. It will also explore different governance and operating designs that would enable central banks to share CBDC infrastructures Technical prototypes of the shared platforms will be demonstrated at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2021.