Last year the Italian Banking Association (ABI) said it would trial a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC), Project Leonidas, as part of a Bank of Italy’s sandbox. It released the trial results last week, declaring it a success. The primary benefits were atomic transactions, transparency and information traceability.
The tests were conducted in 2023 and planned before the Eurosystems wholesale DLT trials with central bank money were announced.
While other wCBDC trials often involve testing securities settlement, the ABI focused on the settlement of interbank transactions. It has the distinction of launching one of the first mass DLT banking deployments, Project Spunta, the interbank reconciliation process that went into production in 2020 with almost 100 Italian banks.
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