Bank of Israel teams with Norway, Sweden on digital currency trials

AuthorEti Aflalo
Published date28 September 2022
Publication titleGlobes (Rishon LeZion, Israel)
Cross-border payments are an Achilles heel of the international banking system, which are plagued by high costs, low speed, limited access and insufficient transparency

The Bank of Israel observes that the G20 has launched an ambitious program to improve cross-border payments, aiming to achieve faster and cheaper, as well as more transparent and inclusive cross-border payments.

One of the work-streams explores how CBDCs could play a role in enhancing cross-border payments.

Project Icebreaker is a collaboration between the Bank of Israel, Central Bank of Norway, Sveriges Riksbank and BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Centre to develop a "hub" to which participating central banks will connect their domestic proof-of-concept CBDC systems. The objective is to test some specific key functions and the technological feasibility of interlinking different domestic CBDC systems.

The architecture is designed to enable immediate retail CBDC payments across borders, at a significantly lower cost than with existing systems, which are typically based on payments being sent via several different banks to the final recipient (the so-called correspondent banking system).

The project will run through the...

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