The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank of Canada have completed “a successful experiment” on cross-border payments using central bank digital currencies, tapping distributed ledger technology or blockchain with the aim to achieve faster, cheaper, and more secured transactions. The two central banks also discuss their learnings in a report that suggests design options for cross-border settlement systems and details limitations of a technique used, called Hashed Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC).
Marking the first such pilot between both agencies, the blockchain-based implementation showed potential to improve efficiencies and reduce risks for cross-border payments, they said in a joint statement released Thursday.