On June 5, Project mBridge was announced to have reached the minimum viable product (MVP) stage. The project is the fruit of collaborative efforts of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Project members in the above four jurisdictions can now, based on local reality, conduct real-value transactions in an orderly manner in accordance with corresponding procedures.
Project mBridge aims to develop, with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) at the core, a cross-border payment solution that features high efficiency, low costs, high compatibility and compliance. By covering different jurisdictions and currencies, the project explores the utilization of distributed ledger technology and CBDCs to enable faster and safer cross-border payments and settlements at a lower cost.
In 2022, a pilot involving real-value transactions in CBDCs from the four jurisdictions was successfully completed for the first time. Since then, the mBridge project team has been exploring whether the prototype platform could evolve to become an MVP—a stage now reached. To achieve this, the four founding participant central banks and monetary authorities have each deployed a blockchain node in their own jurisdictions, while commercial banks have conducted a pilot of real-value transactions. In tandem, the project steering committee has specified the platform governance structure, legal framework, and business rules for the MVP stage. In the next step, Project mBridge will invite participation of more monetary authorities, commercial banks and business entities.
