The Bank of Canada (BoC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have successfully discharged trial cross-border payments using blockchain technology and central bank digital currencies. This is the first of a kind testing, reports Coindesk.
The banks have linked their respective blockchain projects, Jasper, based on R3’s Corda, and Ubin, backed up by JPMorgan’s Quorum.
The two platforms were connected via a method known as hashed time-locked contracts, allowing direct Payment versus Payment (PvP) settlement without the use of an intermediary.
Following the results of the experiment, the parties noted a “great potential to increase efficiencies and reduce risks for cross-border payments.”
“The successful outcome of the Jasper-Ubin project is a big milestone for the modernization of cross-border, cross-currency transactions,” said David Treat, managing director and global blockchain lead of Accenture, a company behind technical support of the project.
Both BoC and MAS stated that blockchain technology could play a vital role in enhancing cross-border payments and could become fundamental in creating a unified inter-bank settlement system.
Blockchain-based cross-border payments have also been on the try-out list of a payment service giant, Western Union, that has been experimenting with Ripple technology.