Earlier this week the European Central Bank (ECB) announced 48 new participants in the second wave of its wholesale DLT settlement trials. The unexpected news was the participation of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). The ECB trials include three central bank settlement solutions, only one of which is a wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) from the Banque de France. Based on today’s announcement, Hong Kong only plans to work with France’s CBDC platform DL3S to enable real time cross border payments.
In early March the HKMA unveiled Project Ensemble, a new wholesale CBDC initiative to support interbank payments using tokenized deposits. It also aims to provide a settlement asset for tokenization projects such as Hong Kong’s recent digital green bond.
Hence, the two central banks plan to test the interoperability between the Project Ensemble platform and France’s DL3S. According to an agreement signed between the two central banks, this work will underpin future tokenization collaboration efforts as well as work on other new technologies.
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