The Central Bank of the UAE together with the Bank for International Settlements, Innovation Hub Centre in Honk Kong, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, and the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China have issued the first Multiple CBDC Bridge (mBridge) Project report - a major milestone of international trade payment project, and a step closer to making cross-border trade payments easier, safer and in real-time,

mBridge uses central bank digital currencies (CBDC) for international fund transfers between participating banks, based on distributed ledger technology (DLT – also known as “blockchain”). Since February 2021, the CBUAE has worked with its global central banking partners to deliver this proof-of-concept, creating more efficient and innovative CBDC infrastructure to reduce obstacles to cross-border payments, including high costs, lack of transparency, low efficiency and other operational complexities.

The Report’s early results demonstrate a substantial improvement in cross-border fund transfer speeds - from multiple days to seconds, around the clock - and the potential to reduce correspondent banking costs significantly for the users, whilst improving bank inter-operability and ensuring regulatory compliance.

To read Connecting Economies Through CBDC report, please click here.