Banco de España announces partners for wholesale CBDC trials
Spain’s central bank, Banco de España, has awarded contracts to a consortium involving Spanish banks Cecabank and Abanca to trial the use of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for securities settlement.
Banco de España picks partners for wholesale CBDC trials
The central bank has also handed a contact to Adhara Blockchain, Fnality’s UK-based technology partner, to design and deliver the underlying wholesale infrastructure for the project.
As part of a six-month pilot project, the trio will work to issue two or more wholesale CBDCs for cross-border, interbank and coupon payment purposes specifically, while the tokenisation and settlement of a simulated bond will also be included in the remit.
Adhara Blockchain is expected to support these efforts with a digital interbank orchestration platform, while also facilitating atomic settlement and the issuance of CBDCs and wallets to platform participants.
Banco de España claims the trio were selected from a pool of 24 hopeful applications, finalising its decisions a year after it first said it would welcome applications for project partners.
While the central bank of Spain continues its work on these CBDC projects, the Spanish banking sector, including Cecabank and Abanca, also continues to support Europe-wide efforts to lift a potential digital euro off the ground.
Led by the European Central Bank (ECB), the development of a digital euro has so far considered the use of CBDCs in retail, wholesale and distributed ledger technology (DLT) securities transactions. However, Spain’s endeavours appear to be more orientated on tokenised deposits and DLT securities, at least for now.
When it first revealed its intention to source suitable partners for the project back in December 2022, Banco de España indicated that its main focus was towards the use of CBDCs in interbank payments, securities settlement through delivery versus payment (DVP) and in addressing the pros and cons within Spain’s wider financial system.
