Ripple Partners with Central Bank of Bhutan to Launch CBDC Trial
The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan will start testing its digital currency in partnership with Ripple.
The San Francisco-based company will integrate its distributed ledger technology into Bhutan’s existing payment system.
During the trial phase, the Ripple-powered central bank digital currency will be used for cross-border remittances as well as settlement services.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse says that his company wants to develop a platform that will allow different CBDCs to reach interoperability.
The partnership seems to have been in the works for quite some time. Tashi Yezer, senior payments system officer at Bhutan’s central bank, was one of the speakers at Ripple’s Swell webinar for the APAC region that took place in April.
Ripple announced a private version of the XRP Ledger designed for central banks in early March. It pitched the solution as instantaneous, energy-efficient, and reliable.
Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently introduced the concept of federated sidechains on the XRP Ledger, which would allow central banks to set up their own networks.
It also published a white paper called “The Future of CDBCs.”
In July, RippleNet general manager Asheesh Birla said that his team had been having conversations with central banks “for a long time.”
The embattled company claims that its business keeps thriving outside of the U.S. in spite of the legal woes on its home turf.
