Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, is working with colleagues in Israel and Norway and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to test instant payments via cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to a press release on Wednesday.

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Quick Facts

• The “Project Icebreaker” program will continue until the end of the year, with a final report expected in the first quarter of 2023, the press release said.

• “This first-of-its-kind experiment will delve deeper into technology, architecture and design choices and trade-offs and explore related policy issues,” said Beju Shah, director of the BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Center. “These lessons will be invaluable to central banks considering implementing CBDCs for cross-border payments.”

• “Project Icebreaker” is the fourth cross-border CBDC project in which BIS has participated; the other three are mBridge, Project Dunbar and Project Jura.

• On Tuesday, a BIS consultant said the central banks of Hong Kong, China, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates and the BIS had completed the pilot project for the cross-border CBDC project mBridge, where foreign exchange transactions amount to more than $22 million in value. have been done.

• Currently, 105 countries, accounting for more than 95% of global GDP, are exploring CBDC, and ten countries have fully adopted it, according to data from the Atlantic Council. The think tank also pointed out that interoperability between CBDCs could be the next challenge to tackle for seamless cross-border payments.

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