December 7, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and participating financial institutions have completed the testing for Project Agila, the wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) of the BSP.
The project enables financial institutions to transfer funds to one another outside regular business hours, including nights, weekends and holidays. These transactions can be securely facilitated using open-source distributed ledger technology via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“Wholesale CBDCs are expected to enhance liquidity management, reduce settlement risks and support financial stability,” BSP Governor Eli Remolona Jr. said.
“Insights from this project will guide the BSP’s CBDC roadmap. We aim to leverage new technologies to enhance the efficiency and resilience of the national payment system,” he said.
Project Agila aims to help the BSP and participating financial institutions explore the potential of CBDCs while evaluating if this technology can help improve the country’s large-value payment system.
CBDCs are digital money denominated in the national unit of account and are direct liabilities of the central bank. Wholesale CBDCs may be used by commercial banks and other financial institutions for interbank payments, securities transactions and cross-border payments.
Earlier in July, BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said the central bank is on track to issue its wholesale CBDC by 2029, or within the six-year term of Remolona.
“The governor is very early in his term and we’re already about to conclude proof of concept. This is an innovative payment instrument,” he had said.
Project Agila is a two-phase run that started in December 2022. It aims to better understand CBDC technology and assess the capability of wholesale CBDC to foster advancements in the large-value payment system.
The BSP completed the first phase of the pilot by picking Hyperledger Fabric as the distributed ledger technology in July last year.
Be the first to comment