Banque de France and HKMA Collaborate to Enhance CBDC Cross-Border Payments

The Banque de France (BDF) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have announced a significant collaboration to advance wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) solutions, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. This partnership aims to explore new cross-border payment opportunities and enhance financial innovation.

Strengthening Financial Innovation

The BDF and the HKMA have maintained a close relationship in promoting financial innovation. The latest collaboration marks the HKMA’s participation in Wave 2 of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s Eurosystem exploratory work. This initiative represents a major milestone, as it is the first time a central banking institution outside the Eurosystem has participated in such an endeavor. The two institutions recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which signifies a significant step forward in bilateral cooperation to foster innovation in wholesale CBDC and the tokenisation market.

Interoperability and Efficiency

The collaboration will focus on studying the interoperability between their respective CBDC infrastructures—BDF’s DL3S and HKMA’s Project Ensemble Sandbox. The main goal is to enhance real-time cross-border and cross-currency payments. The cross-border experiment aims to optimize settlement efficiency and facilitate interoperability between financial market infrastructures in different jurisdictions. This initiative is expected to lay the groundwork for further advancements in tokenisation and new technologies.

Statements from Officials

Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the BDF, emphasized the objective of improving cross-border payments. He highlighted the opportunity presented by the Eurosystem exploratory work to collaborate with the HKMA on various use cases for payment versus payment between the tokenised forms of the Hong Kong dollar and the Euro. Beau remarked, “The HKMA’s recent announcement for the launch of Project Ensemble was very timely to initiate this cooperation. We look forward to further testing our DL3S platform in this context and hope that together we can facilitate the financial inclusion expected from enhanced cross-border payments.”

Howard Lee, Deputy Chief Executive of the HKMA, pointed out the vast potential for collaboration between France and Hong Kong, particularly in the Fintech sector. Lee stated, “The HKMA announced Project Ensemble early this year to explore innovative financial market infrastructure that will facilitate seamless interbank settlement of tokenised money through wholesale CBDC. With the collaboration between BDF’s DL3S and the HKMA’s Project Ensemble Sandbox underway, we look forward to joining hands with the BDF to further explore different cross-border payment solutions and use cases, to promote financial market connectivity and push forward the development of the global tokenisation market.”

Mr. Howard Lee (left), Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, meets Mr. Denis Beau (right), First Deputy Governor of the Banque de France, in Paris to exchange views and discuss cross-border collaboration opportunities.

For more details, visit the official Hong Kong Monetary Authority website.