Swiss National Bank Launches Pilot Wholesale CBDC for Tokenized Securities

According to PANews, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has initiated a pilot program for its wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) to facilitate the settlement of tokenized securities on the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX). The SNB's recent annual report highlights this initiative along with other related activities, including the exploration of a synthetic CBDC, a private tokenized currency backed by central bank funds. The SNB describes this tokenized private currency as one of three options under consideration for distributed ledger technology (DLT) settlement. The other options include the wCBDC and a connection between the SIC payment system and DLT systems, which was previously tested in the Project Helvetia CBDC exploration. The Swiss central bank emphasized that it has not committed to issuing a permanent wCBDC and remains neutral regarding the adoption of any specific solution, focusing instead on evaluating various options at this stage.