Swiss National Bank, BIS and SIX "Successfully Test Integration of Wholesale CBDC Settlement With Commercial Banks"

January 13, 2022 - In a joint press release issued today by The Swiss National Bank (SNB), The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and SIX, it was confirmed that in the fourth quarter of 2021, BIS, SNB and SIX successfully tests the integration of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) with commercial banks. The banks that took part in Phase II of Project Helvetia were Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and UBS.

As a result of the successful 'experiment', the SNB stated that integrating a wholesale CBDC into existing core banking systems is operationally possible. However, the Swiss Central Bank also states that Project Helvetia is of an exploratory nature and should not be interpreted as an indication that the SNB plans to issue a wholesale CBDC".

The experiment was carried out during the fourth quarter of 2021 and explored the settlement of interbank, monetary policy and cross-border transactions on the test systems of SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the Swiss real-time gross settlement system – SIX Interbank Clearing (SIC) – and core banking systems.

Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, commented, “We have demonstrated that innovation can be harnessed to preserve the best elements of the current financial system, including settlement in central bank money, while also potentially unlocking new benefits. As DLT goes mainstream, this will become more relevant than ever."

Andréa M. Maechler, Member of the Governing Board, Swiss National Bank, said, “To continue fulfilling their mandates of ensuring monetary and financial stability, central banks need to stay on top of technological change. Project Helvetia is a prime example of how to achieve this. It allowed the SNB to deepen its understanding of how the safety of central bank money could be extended to tokenised asset markets."

Jos Dijsselhof, CEO, SIX, also commented, "“SIX is proud to collaborate with the BIS Innovation Hub and the SNB and contribute to Project Helvetia by leveraging SDX, the world’s first regulated DLT-based financial market infrastructure. The project demonstrates that the SDX platform supports wholesale CBDC for settling tokenised assets end to end."

The SNB further stated in todays press announcement, "Project Helvetia looks toward a future in which more financial assets are tokenised and financial infrastructures run on DLT. International regulatory standards suggest that operators of systemically important infrastructures should settle obligations in central bank money whenever practical and available. While none of the existing DLT-based platforms are systemic yet, they may become so in the future. Moreover, central banks may need to extend monetary policy implementation to tokenised asset markets."

An overview of the second phase of Project Helvetia can be viewed here: