Accenture, HSBC, Seba Bank Among Bank of France’s Eight CBDC Finalists

The Bank of France’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiments are moving forward with eight candidate firms picked to begin work “in the coming days,” the central bank said in a press release Monday.

• The chosen include Accenture, Euroclear, HSBC, Iznes, LiquidShare, ProsperUS, Seba Bank and Societe Generale FORGE, which has previously studied CBDC for the central bank.
• These firms will explore three CBDC focus areas: the regulation of CBDC in cross-border payments; “arrangements” for making fiat money available; and the exchange of financial instruments for central bank fiat, the Bank said.
• Crypto-assets are not among the financial instruments to be researched, however. The Bank of France explicitly excluded “crypto-assets” writ large from its run-down of areas of study.
• France cannot unilaterally move to adopt a national CBDC due to its membership in the Eurozone. Even so, the country’s central bank said on Monday that these experiments will contribute to the European Union’s growing focus on CBDC.