Hong Kong Monetary Authority: mBridge project has entered the MVP stage

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced that the mBridge project has entered the minimum viable product (MVP) stage. The project team will continue to optimize various aspects of the platform and further expand the participation of public and private institutions. The mBridge project aims to study how to apply central bank digital currency and innovative solutions to solve the current pain points of cross-border payments. The authorities said that the MVP platform has high compatibility and can be used as a testing basis to explore more technical solutions, new use cases and interoperability with other platforms, and welcome private institutions to submit solutions and use case suggestions. As of June, 5 local commercial banks have connected to the mBridge platform to participate in the MVP stage, including Bank of China (Hong Kong), Bank of Communications Hong Kong Branch, ICBC (Asia), Standard Chartered Hong Kong, and HSBC. The authorities expect that more banks will connect to the platform in the future. In addition, the HKMA and the project team welcome the Saudi Central Bank to become a full member of the mBridge MVP platform. There are currently 26 observer members, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and many central banks around the world. The observer members will hold regular meetings to understand the progress, experience and development of the project, and can conduct tests through the sandbox to better understand the platform functions. HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue said that the mBridge project is the most mature "multi-central bank digital currency" research project under the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, and sincerely invites other central banks to participate as users or co-developers. (RTHK)