Forbes - Up, up and away 🎈

But but but... A wholesale CBDC, designed to connect financial market infrastructures and streamline transactions, should not be confused with a consumer-facing digital currency that would be used in retail bank accounts. Furthermore, no one at the SNB or SIX has said the launch of a wholesale CBDC in Switzerland is imminent. "We have demonstrated that innovation can be harnessed to preserve the best elements of the current financial system, including settlement in central bank money, while also potentially unlocking new benefits," Benoit Coeuré, head of the BIS Innovation Hub, which also took part in the experiment, was quoted by Reuters.

Why it matters: Wholesale CBDCs are an early step toward complete financial digitalization. While they're only likely to make existing systems more efficient, a successful trial shows progress is being made.

Zoom out: Central bankers around the world, from Hong Kong and Thailand to the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and the European Union, have been stepping up work on CBDCs to ensure they don't get left behind by private digital money systems such as bitcoin and other decentralized alternatives as well as the likes of Facebook's proposed diem.

Meanwhile... The British parliament and not the Bank of England must decide whether to introduce a state-backed digital currency because of potentially “far-reaching consequences”, a House of Lords committee has said. The Finance Times has a write-up.

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