China: Announced completion of CBDC Project mBridge pilot phase

On 26 October 2022, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority published a report announcing the completion of the pilot phase of Project mBridge in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China, and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates. Project mBridge is a cross-border Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) used by 20 banks to conduct over 160 payments and foreign exchange transactions during its pilot. This pilot represented the largest cross-border CBDC project to date and was among the first to settle real-value, cross-border transactions for corporates. The involved parties plan to further develop the mBridge platform into a minimum viable product and eventually a production-ready system.