The Banque de France has finalised the 8 companies that were selected to test out the use of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for interbank settlements over the next few months.

Firms selected by the central bank for the test phase are Accenture, Euroclear, HSBC, Iznes, LiquidShare, ProsperUS, Seba Bank and Société Générale.

The test phase will allow the central bank to explore new ways of exchanging financial instruments (excluding crypto-assets).

In addition to that, Banque de France will also test the settlements in the CBDC in order to improve executing conditions for cross-border payments and revise the arrangements for making the currency available.

The strong mobilisation around this call for applications testifies to the interest aiming to explore the potential contributions of a CBDC to improve the functioning of financial markets, in particular interbank settlements.

The lessons learnt from these experiments will be a direct contribution to the more global reflection conducted by the Eurosystem on the value of a central bank digital currency.

Featured image credit: Mbzt – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link