The Bank of Spain has announced that Adhara, a treasury and transactions payment platform, and a consortium formed by Cecabank and Abanca, two private banks, will be its partners in the development of several upcoming wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) trials, which will be complete outside of the ongoing digital euro process.
Bank of Spain Announces Wholesale CBDC Trial Partners
The Bank of Spain is moving to test a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in partnership with two tech partners. The bank recently announced that it enlisted the aid of Adhara, a Web3 company, and a consortium of two national banks, Cecabank and Abanca, to design and test different platforms involving a wholesale CBDC.
In a document, the Bank of Spain describes that Adhara will work in “the simulation of achieving interbank payments both with the same tokenized wholesale CBDC and with several wholesale CBDCs issued by different central banks.” To this end, Adhara needs to develop several CBDC infrastructures to provide wallets to the involved entities and a digital interbank payments platform.
In the case of the Abanca-Cecabank consortium, the trials will be centered around “testing the integration of a wholesale CBDC with the settlement of financial assets and providing practical evidence about the possible advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of a wholesale CBDC compared to traditional processes, procedures, and infrastructures.” This comprises the issuance, tokenization, and registration of a simulated bond on a blockchain platform managed by Cecabank.
The bank opened the calls for contributors to present their proposals more than a year ago. These tests are separated from the ongoing pilot project of the digital euro, which entered the “preparation phase” in October, which includes finalizing the digital euro rulebook and the selection of providers to develop an infrastructure for the European currency.
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