The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 2024 program features six new projects, including initiating a blockchain-based tokenization initiative and entering the second phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) privacy testing, cybersecurity, fighting financial crime, and green finance.
The BIS released its Annual Work Program on January 23. It includes six new initiatives investigating cybersecurity, financial crime prevention, CBDCs, and renewable finance.
Cecilia Skingsley, the director of the BIS Innovation Hub, stated in the announcement that tokenization is an additional crucial area in which “more initiatives” will follow the Promise project.
The BIS, the Swiss National Bank, and the World Bank’s Project Promissa aim to construct a proof-of-concept (PoC) platform for digital tokenized promissory notes.
Promissory notes are conventional debt or financial instruments that legally obligate one party to remit a specified sum of money to another at a predetermined time. The majority of paper-based promissory notes, vital to the financial system, continue to be used, per the BIS. Beginning in early 2025, the BIS anticipates concluding the PoC.
In the interim, the BIS and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) will commence a new research phase into the privacy implications of CBDC-based retail payments as part of Project Aurum. The HKMA concluded developing the retail CBDC prototype, wholesale interbank system, and e-wallet for the Aurum initiative in 2022.
Project Leap, Project Symbiosis, Project Hertha, and Project NGFS Data Directory 2.0 are four additional BIS initiatives that do not explicitly involve the digital assets sector.
Additionally, the financial institution will persist in its efforts to automate compliance protocols for cross-border transactions through Project Mandala, undertake experimental multi-CBDC platforms for cross-border payments via Project Cambridge and Project Pyxtrail, and oversee the balance sheets of asset-backed stablecoins via Project Pyxtrail.
In 2023, the BIS remained a prominent international proponent of CBDCs and a vehement detractor of stablecoins. General manager of the BIS AgustÃn Carstens urged central banks worldwide to take the lead in digital innovation in November 2023, referring to CBDCs as the “central element” of this leadership.
