Design options for interoperability and funds locking across digital pounds and central bank money (arXiv)
arXiv published a paper by Barclays staff that analyzes the design options for supporting “functional consistency” across digital pounds and commercial bank money. It focuses on three key capabilities: communication between digital pound ecosystem participants, funds locking, and interoperability across digital pounds and commercial bank money. It explores them via three payments use cases: person-to-person push payment, merchant-initiated request to pay, and lock funds and pay on physical delivery. It then presents and evaluates the suitability of design options to provide the specific capabilities for each use case and draw initial insights. The paper concludes that a financial market infrastructure (FMI) providing specific capabilities could simplify the experience of ecosystem participants, simplify the operating platforms for both the Bank of England and digital pound payment interface providers (PIPs), and facilitate the creation of innovative services. [Read more at arXiv]
41 institutions join BIS tokenized cross border payment Project Agorá (Ledger Insights)
The Institute of International Finance (IIF) released the names of 41 firms selected to participate in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Project Agorá, aimed at modernizing correspondent banking using a unified ledger, tokenized deposits and wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) from seven central banks. The seven central banks are the Banque de France, Banxico, New York Fed, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and Bank of Korea. Thirty five of the selected institutions are banks representing the seven jurisdictions. The others are Visa, Mastercard and SWIFT, Eurex Clearing, Euroclear and the SIX Digital Exchange. [Read more at the IIF]
Sweden’s central bank calls for new bank regulations to protect access to cash (Riksbank)
Sveriges Riksbank has called for regulations to ensure that Swedish companies and public authorities, who are legally obliged to accept cash, have access to functioning services for daily takings and petty cash. With banks having largely stopped providing cash services to businesses, only cash-in-transit company Loomis AB is offering these services and almost exclusively by the and entirely on a commercial basis. Banks have chosen to fulfil their obligations by providing deposit machines with limits that are too low for many businesses, and have limited access to petty cash by closing down manual services. The Riksbank also underscored that access to cash is necessary to strengthen civil preparedness regarding payments. [Read more at the Riksbank]
Hedera contributes entire codebase to Linux Foundation (Cointelegraph)
Hedera has become a founding premier member of the Linux Foundation’s newly launched decentralized trust initiative, and contributed its entire source code, including its hashgraph consensus algorithm and all core services, tools and libraries, to the Foundation. The contribution, which forms the new project “Hiero,” aims to allow developers to collaborate on decentralized trust technologies globally under an open-source framework. [Read more at Hedera]
Upcoming Speaking Engagements:
- Digital Currency Conference, London, September 23-24. The conference will bring together policymakers, regulators, and technology and innovation experts to network and discuss all aspects of digital currencies. And enter the KiffmeisterDCC code at registration to get a 20% discount! [Find out more and register here]
And just a reminder that I produce a monthly digest of central bank digital currency (CBDC) developments exclusively for the official sector. So (only) if you work at a central bank, ministry of finance or international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank) and who would like to receive it by email on the first business day of every month, please DM me on LinkedIn or email me at john@kiffmeister.com.
