The General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, Agustín Carstens, recently announced that the preliminary exploratory work of the multi-central bank digital currency bridge project has been completed, and the project has reached a mature level that can be handed over to the participating parties. The currency bridge project will be fully taken over by the participating central banks and monetary authorities for continuous development and operation.

According to reporters, the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge project is jointly built by the Innovation Hub of the Bank for International Settlements (Hong Kong), the Bank of Thailand (Central Bank of Thailand), the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and is managed by the currency bridge project team. The project aims to create a high-efficiency, low-cost, highly scalable, and regulatory-compliant cross-border payment solution centered on central bank digital currencies. By covering different jurisdictions and currencies, it explores the application of distributed ledger technology and central bank digital currencies in cross-border payments, achieving faster, lower-cost, and more secure cross-border payments and settlements.

In this month, the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge project officially entered the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. Since then, multiple application scenarios including trade settlement and cross-border tax payment based on the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge have been implemented. This has verified that cross-border remittance through the currency bridge is highly efficient in fund processing and significantly reduces transaction costs compared to traditional cross-border remittance methods.

In the future, the mBridge project team stated that they will spare no effort to fully leverage the potential of the mBridge project, advancing it from the promotion phase to full production. The transfer of the mBridge project to participating central banks and monetary authorities will not affect the legal and operational arrangements for existing and new members. These central banks and monetary authorities will continue to collaborate with both public and private sectors, developing and operating the mBridge project through an innovative distributed model, with high efficiency, transparency, and resilience, while adhering to cross-border payment regulations and the unified requirements of international organizations in areas such as anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, and sanctions.