- The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates has conducted the “world’s largest” CBDC pilot
- The bank teamed up with four other entities to test cross-border payments using CBDCs
- Project mBridge was launched in 2021 as a way for multiple countries to exchange CBDCs easily
The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) has conducted what it has called the world’s largest Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) trial in tandem with other central banks. The pilot was part of Project mBridge, which is experimenting with cross-border payments using a common platform and through which central banks can issue and exchange their CBDCs. The news came just a day before Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that the Central Bank of Kazakhstan was looking at running its own CBDC on Binance’s BNB Chain.
Project mBridge Involved Five Entities
Project mBridge was announced last year as an effort between several countries to create an easy way for them to transact in CBDCs. CBUAE’s six-week pilot project featured the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Bank for International Settlements.
Commercial banks in four jurisdictions used mBridge for 160 payment and foreign exchange transactions totalling more than 80 million dirhams ($21.78 million), with CBUAE heralding the potential of the project, saying that it “demonstrated faster, cost effective and secure cross-border monetary settlements using central bank money, identified as a G20 economic priority.”
Binance Working with Kazakhstan
Just a day after Project mBridge was announced, Zhao took to Twitter to explain how Binance’s BNB Chain could be used to host Kazakhstan’s CBDC in the future:
Looking forward to NBK preparing CBDC use cases to see how they could be integrated into #BNB Chain to bridge the gap between traditional banking and the crypto ecosystem. (4/4)
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) October 26, 2022
According to the Atlantic Council, roughly 100 countries, representing 95% of the world’s GDP, are using or looking into CBDCs, with China leading the way in adoption so far.
