​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Overview

Project mBridge is a multi-central bank digital currency platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, built on distributed ledger technology to enable instant cross-border payments and settlements. The project aimed to evaluate the feasibility of using wholesale CBDC to boost the effectiveness of cross-border payment and settlement capabilities within a controlled test environment (using no real-money transactions).

SAMA joined the Project mBridge as an observing member in 2023 alongside over 25 other observing central banks and international organizations, such as Federal Reserve Bank of New York, European Central Bank, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of Italy, Bank of France, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank). In 2024, SAMA progressed to participate in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) phase with a limited experimentation capacity through a Proof of Concept (PoC). Following the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announcement in October 2024 regarding the handover of the project to participants, SAMA successfully completed its planned experimentation in mid-2025 and subsequently concluded its participation. This effort was part of SAMA's ongoing research and exploration of potential domestic and cross-border use cases for wholesale CBDC and tokenization technologies, helping to build knowledge and assess their implications for the future of payment systems and financial market infrastructures.

​​​​​​​​Scope

A Project observer in 2023 and a participant in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) platform in 2024-2025 to evaluate the feasibility of using wholesale CBDC to boost the effectiveness of cross-border payment and settlement between commercial banks.