The central banks of Commonwealth of australia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa take announced a joint initiative to trial international settlements using central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

The initiative, dubbed Projection Dunbar, volition prototype shared platforms enabling direct transfers between institutions using digital currencies issued past multiple central banks. The airplane pilot's findings will exist used to inform the "development of global and regional platforms" in add-on to supporting the G20'south roadmap for improving cross-border payments.

Project Dunbar will exist carried out in partnership with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub from its Singapore Center. The project will engage multiple partners to develop unlike distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms and explore different designs that would enable central banks to share CBDC infrastructure.

A joint announcement emphasizes the efficiency savings associated with DLT-based payments, stating:

"These multi-CBDC platforms will allow financial institutions to transact directly with each other in the digital currencies issued by participating fundamental banks, eliminating the need for intermediaries and cutting the time and toll of transactions."

Michele Bullock, assistant governor of the Reserve Banking concern of Australia (RBA), highlighted that "enhancing cross-border payments has become a priority for the international regulatory community," adding that the RBA is "very focused" on the matter in its domestic policy work.

"Projection Dunbar brings together central banks with years of experience and unique perspectives in CBDC projects and ecosystem partners at advanced stages of technical development on digital currencies," said Andre McCormack, caput of the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Middle. He added:

"With this grouping of capable and passionate partners, nosotros are confident that our work on multi-CBDCs for international settlements will break new ground in this side by side stage of CBDC experimentation and lay the foundation for global payments connectivity."

The RBA has consistently downplayed the demand for a domestic CBDC, however, citing the success of the New Payments Platform, which allows instant digital transfers 24-hours a twenty-four hours.

Related: Republic of india CBDC pilot may commence in Dec, says RBI governor

Project Dunbar is expected to demonstrate technical prototypes of shared DLT platforms at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November of this year. The initiative expects to publish its complete findings in early 2022.