France’s central bank selects eight applications to test CBDC

France’s central bank has made another bold step in its mission to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) after selecting eight eight applicants to test potential solutions.

In April, Coin Rivet reported that France had begun testing its digital Euro following a global movement that saw a collection of central banks attempt to form consensus on the potential benefits of CBDCs.

Now, the testing stage has progressed with Accenture, Euroclear, HSBC, Iznes, LiquidShare, ProsperUS, Seba Bank and Societe Generale’s Forge all being nominated to test the digital Euro in the coming days.

A statement from the Banque de France read: “The experiments proposed by the selected candidates will be: to explore new methods of exchanging financial instruments (excluding crypto-assets) for central bank money, to test the regulation in digital central bank money in order to improve the conditions for carrying out cross-border payments and to revisit the arrangements for making central bank money available.”

It continued: “The lessons learned from these experiments will constitute a direct contribution to the more global reflection led by the Eurosystem on the interest of a central bank digital currency.”

The idea of central bank digital currencies has been discussed for the past 12 months with it picking up speed in the likes of Japan and China, which has prompted nations in Europe like France to begin examining the potential advantages.

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