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- The Central Bank of Sweden, Israel and Norway, along with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) launched a project called Icebreaker.
- All the central banks will explore retail CBDC for international payments under this project.
In a Press Release, on September 28, 2022 Sveriges Riksbank published its tests over the cross-border payments with the e-Krona. Sweden’s Central Bank will team-up with the Central Banks of Israel and Norway and the BIS to launch a joint explora-tion of how CBDCs can be used for international retail and remittance payments under a project, Icebreaker.
Project Icebreaker
The following project is a collaboration between Sveriges Riksbank, the Bank of Israel, Norges Bank, and BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Centre. It will develop a “hub” where the participating central banks will connect its domestic proof-of-concept CBDC systems. The project objective is to test the specific key functions and the technological feasibility of interlinking different domestic CBDC systems.
The project structure is designed to enable immediate retail CBDC payments across borders, at a significantly lower cost than with existing systems, based on payments being sent via several different banks to the final recipient.
The project will run through the end of the year, with a The final report of this project is expected in the first quarter of 2023 and will run through the end of the year.
What Did The Heads Say?
The Head of the e-krona Division, Mithra Sundberg said “Sveriges Riksbank is collaborating in this experiment as part of the e-krona project. By interlinking our current e-krona platform, developed in a test environment, with the other countries we gain valuable lessons regarding cross-border payments using a CBDC.”
Bank of Israel Deputy Governor, Andrew Abir also added that “We are privileged to be exploring the topic in this project together with partners that have vast knowledge and experience on CBDCs as well as on cross-border payment policies.”
Torbjørn Hægeland, Norges Bank’s Executive Director for Financial Stability added “We are delighted to be part of one of the first experimental test of cross border retail CBDC together with our partners BIS Innovation Hub, Sveriges Riksbank and Bank of Israel.”
And, lastly the Head of the BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Centre, Beju Shah stated “This first-of-a-kind experiment will dig deeper into the technology, architecture and design choices and trade-offs, and explore related policy questions.”
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