Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, is partnering with Israel, Norway, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to test central bank digital currency (CBDC) for international retail payments. According to the Riksbank press release, the Project Icebreaker partnership will extend till the end of 2022, with a final report presented in Q1 2023. Also;
- The first-ever international project will research the technology, architecture, and design choices and trade-offs and explore related policy questions.
- The project is the BIS's fourth international CBDC program — others include Project Jura, mBridge, and Project Dunbar.
- The BIS corroborated with Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, and mainland China to launch the just concluded pilot of the mBridge project. The project facilitated over $22 million worth of transactions.
According to the Atlantic Council, up to 105 countries have explored CBDCs. Ten out of this number have fully rolled out their CBDCs. The council also projected CBDCs to tackle seamless full-scale cross-border payments.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) speculated that CBDCs could reduce costs for cross-border payments.
Although CBDCs are gaining momentum across the globe, centralization, security, and privacy are among the concerns that heavily make a case against them.
