Swiss National Bank (SNB) has completed testing of the wholesale CBDC (wCBDC). Board member Thomas Moser said in an interview that the technical launch could take place in January 2022, subject to a political decision.
If approved, the regulator will use the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX).
“Technically, we will be ready. We took into account all the details. We made an end-to-end connection and figured out how this is going to be reflected on the balance sheet, how to conduct operations. The only question is whether we can legally work with wCBDC, ”the official said.
An experiment within the Helvetia project with the support of the Bank for International Settlements was launched in 2019.
In December 2020, its participants reported on the success of CBDC trials for adjustments on tokenized assets. The legal and technical possibilities of their translation were studied.
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By now, the second phase of the Helvetia project has been closed. It involved the integration of wCBDC into the infrastructures of five banks. The publication recalled that Citibank, JPMorgan, and Credit Suisse were already mentioned among the participants.
The missing link in the scheme was the required FINMA licenses to operate the SDX. In September, the platform received them. The first real transactions will take place in November. The report on the results of the second phase will be published in January.
The compound of digital cash and distributed ledger (SDX leverages R3's Corda) allows for atomic swaps.
“Everyone complains about slow T + 1 and T + 2, but they give the banks time. Atomic swaps will complicate liquidity management, forcing financial institutions to seek answers to questions about costs and benefits, ”commented Moses.
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The official noted that the regulator gives preference to CBDC over stablecoins.
“In stablecoins, you always have counterparty risk per issuer. If SDX becomes a systemically significant organization, we will be faced with the subject of the need to use wCBDC instead of a private version of money,” he explained.
Previously, the Swiss government found no benefit from issuing a retail CBDC, but has acknowledged some benefit from its wholesale option. This position was shared by SNB.