SNB: Step by Step Understanding of Wholesale CBDC

The Swiss National Bank (SNB), with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Swiss innovation hub, is running project Helvetia III, the world’s first issuance of a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on a regulated third party platform to settle commercial transactions with tokenised assets. Tokenisation is the digital representation of claims on financial assets on a programmable platform which, typically, relies on distributed ledger technology. It is claimed that tokenisation offers a more secure, efficient and transparent financial system.

Four years ago, Helvetia I and then Helvetia II explored a wholesale CBDC and shared its work with the bank community. On 23 December 2023 Helvetia III began with the aim of taking I and II from pilot to real use.