Swiss National Bank, in partnership with SIX swiss exchange is piloting the wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC) the project will be hosted on SDX and use the Swiss Interbank Clearing infrastructure.
The Swiss National Bank (SNB), six commercial institutions, and the SIX Swiss Exchange will work together to pilot the issuance of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the nation, officially known as the Swiss franc wCBDC.
The wholesale CBDC demonstration project, Helvetia Phase III, will evaluate the effectiveness of a Swiss Franc wCBDC in settling digital securities transactions. The pilot builds upon the results of the first two phases, Helvetia Phases I and II, conducted by the BIS Innovation Hub, the SNB, and SIX.
The six participating institutions are SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) member banks: Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, Basler Kantonalbank, Commerzbank, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, UBS, and Zürcher Kantonalbank.
The Swiss wCBDC pilot initiative will be hosted on SDX and utilize the Swiss Interbank Clearing infrastructure. The pilot program will continue from December 2023 until June 2024, per the announcement.
“The pilot’s objective is to test, in a live production environment, the settlement of primary and secondary market transactions in wCBDC.”
During this period, participating institutions will “issue digital Swiss franc bonds, which will be settled against wCBDC based on a delivery-versus-payment basis.” In this prototype environment, all transactions will be secured by digital bonds and settled via SDX in wCBDC.
Parallel to internal CBDC initiatives, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, the Financial Services Agency of Japan, and the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to undertake various crypto pilot initiatives.
As previously reported, the government intends to conduct pilot projects involving fixed income, foreign exchange, and asset management products. “As the scale and sophistication of the pilots increase, there is a need for closer cross-border collaboration between policymakers and regulators,” stated the MAS.
