The Bank of England (BoE) is proposing an experimental program using its Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) to judge their settlement capacity and interoperability, the central bank announced in a discussion paper.
Cointelegraph reports that the BoE promised to undertake the new series of experiments within the next six months. The experiments largely examine CBDC settlement in comparison with the synchronisation of non-CBDC central bank money, as trialed in Project Meridian. A synchronisation network integrates with existing RTGS systems.
Both CBDC and synchronisation approaches may depend on distributed ledger technology. The BoE starts with a word of caution about it:
“The extent to which programmable platforms could impact on our monetary and financial stability objectives will ultimately depend on the likelihood that financial markets take up these technologies at scale. The Bank’s current assessment is that the likelihood of this remains uncertain.”
“Yet to emerge DLT use cases may also affect take-up, so we must guard against a ‘failure of imagination,’” the paper added.
The BoE is revamping its current RTGS system, CHAPS, with the new version expected to debut “in the next few months.” CHAPS crashed earlier in July.
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