The Bank of France and the Swiss National Bank have reportedly formed an alliance with the Bank for International Settlements’ Innovation Hub, to conduct testing for a CBDC system, called “Project Jura”. 

Specifically revealed by the Bank of France on June 10th, the Project Jura trial phase research will reportedly also be joined by a private consortium, spearheaded by the international service firm Accenture. 

The consortium is reportedly made up of different firms, nominally Credit Suisse, UBS, SIX Digital Exchange and R3.

The testing work will reportedly include two wholesale CBDCs – pegged to the Euro and the Swiss franc respectively. The test will carry out the exchange of financial instruments against each wholesale CBDC, through a delivery versus payment settlement apparatus.

The Bank of France further disclosed that local banks in both nations will take care of the settlement for both sides of the transaction. 

Jura is reportedly an extended scope of work of the French central bank in its CBDC project, which has managed to reel in numerous top-tier European financial service establishments as participants. In July last year, the central bank shortlisted eight financial entities to carry out testing for its interbank CBDC initiative.

Global corporation is reportedly becoming a primary target to achieve when it comes to CBDC design, with resources invested to build suitable protocols for cross-border settlements among central banks, with Asia, Hong Kong and China are the three regions conducting trial phases for China’s cross-border utilization of the latter’s digital yuan.

As a matter of fact, Hong Kong and China are also taking part in a larger-scale cross-border CBDC initiative, together with the central banks of Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.