Singapore, September 29 (ANI): The central banks of Singapore, France and Switzerland in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have successfully concluded a project where they tested the cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs).

The cross-border project was done using new decentralised finance technology concepts on a public blockchain.

The project's proof of concept successfully tested the cross-border trading and settlement of hypothetical euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss franc wholesale CBDCs between simulated financial institutions.

These protocols are expected to come in handy in facilitating cross-border trading and settlement between financial institutions going ahead.

Project Mariana is purely experimental and does not indicate that any of the partner central banks intend to issue wCBDC or endorse DeFi or a particular technological solution, said a joint statement.

"Project Mariana pioneers the use of novel technology for interbank foreign exchange markets. It successfully demonstrated that it is feasible to exchange wholesale CBDC across borders using novel concepts such as automated market makers...," said Cecilia Skingsley, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub.

Project Mariana was developed jointly by three Bank for International Settlements (BIS) innovation Hub centres (the Swiss, Singapore and Eurosystem Hub Centres) together with Bank of France, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Swiss National Bank.

In India, the digital rupee, also called as Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), was launched by the Reserve Bank of India on a pilot basis on December 1, 2022. CBDCs are nothing but an electronic form of a sovereign currency. (ANI)