France Joins the Race! "Banque de France" Recruits Mainstream Institutions to Assist in Testing Digital Euro Solutions

According to an announcement released by the Banque de France, the central bank of France, on the 20th of this month, eight commercial banks have been selected as partners to promote and assist in testing digital currency solutions.

French Central Bank: Focus on Clearing Functions

The Banque de France, formerly known as the Royal Bank, founded by Napoleon in 1800, despite its over two-hundred-year history, is succumbing to digital trends and will begin testing in various areas in the coming days. The main list of collaborating banks includes:

• Accenture
• HSBC
• Societe Generale
• Euroclear
• Iznes
• ProsperUS
• Seba Bank
• LiquidShare

According to the announcement, the experiments between the collaborating banks and the central bank include exploring CBDC exchange methods (excluding crypto assets), testing CBDC regulations to improve cross-border payments, and developing various CBDC applications.

It seems that driven by global trends such as China's DCEP and the global stablecoin project Libra, and also prompted by the impact of the previous coronavirus, countries are beginning to pay attention to the necessity of digitalizing currencies. The Banque de France emphasizes that the focus of this experiment is to improve the financial market, especially the clearing functions between banks.

In fact, the Banque de France and Societe Generale successfully tested a digital euro based on blockchain earlier in May this year. Societe Generale issued €40 million worth of collateralized securities using a digital euro for settlement. (source)

Global CBDC Race

In addition to the Banque de France, it was previously reported that the Bank of Canada recently released a "Central Bank Digital Currency Project Manager" position, with no restrictions on foreign nationals.

The Bank of Canada stated that their goal is to create a central bank digital currency in the form of digital cash, aiming to balance privacy and compliance with financial regulations, achieve accessibility, offline payments, and security, and also hope to establish a sustainable business model for CBDC applications.

Furthermore, the G7 meeting originally scheduled for June has been postponed to the end of August due to the pandemic. It was reported that the G7 has decided to collaborate on issuing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), excluding China.

[Note]: G7, Group of Seven industrialized nations: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan.