SWIFT planning launch of new central bank digital currency platform in 12-24 months
LONDON — Global bank messaging network SWIFT is planning a new platform in the next one to two years to connect the wave of central bank digital currencies now in development to the existing finance system, it has told Reuters.
The move, which would be one of the most significant yet for the nascent CBDC ecosystem given SWIFT’s key role in global banking, is likely to be fine-tuned to when the first major ones are launched.
Around 90 per cent of the world’s central banks are now exploring digital versions of their currencies. Most don’t want to be left behind by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but are grappling with technological complexities. SWIFT’s head of innovation, Nick Kerigan, said its latest trial, which took 6 months and involved a 38-member group of central banks, commercial banks and settlement platforms, had been one of the largest global collaborations on CBDCs and “tokenised” assets to date.
It focused on ensuring different countries’ CBDCs can all be used together even if built on different underlying technologies, or “protocols”, thereby reducing payment system fragmentation risks.
It also showed they could be used in highly complex trade or foreign exchange payments and potentially be automated so to both speed up and lower the costs of the processes. Kerigan said the results, which had also proven banks could use their existing infrastructure, had been widely regarded as a success by those who took part and given SWIFT a timeline to work to.
“We are looking at a roadmap to productize (launch as a product) in the next 12-24 months,” Kerigan said in an interview. “It’s moving out of experimental stage towards something that is becoming a reality.”
Although the timeframe could still shift if major economy CBDC launches get delayed, getting out the blocks for when they do would be a major boost for maintaining SWIFT’s incumbent dominance in the bankto-bank plumbing network.
Countries such as the Bahamas, Nigeria and Jamaica already have CBDCs up and running. China is well advanced with reallife trials of an e-yuan. The European Central Bank has digital euro one underway too, while the Bank for International Settlements, the global central bank umbrella group, is running multiple cross-border trials.
SWIFT’s main advantage though is that its existing network is already usable in over 200 countries and connects more than 11,500 banks and funds who use it to send trillions of dollars every day.