Thomas Jordan, head of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), has announced that the bank is launching a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) pilot project. Jordan made the announcement at the Point Zero Forum in Zurich on June 26. The wCBDC will be issued on the Swiss SIX digital exchange as part of the SNB’s Project Helvetia and is expected to run for a limited time. Jordan stated that the pilot “will be real money equivalent to bank reserves and the objective is to test real transactions with market participants.”
SNB Governing Board Member Thomas Moser suggested that CBDCs could work well with decentralized finance, and SNB Chief Economist Carlos Lenz previously expressed intentions for a wCBDC platform a year prior. SNB Governing Board Member Andréa Maechler has stated that the central bank does not foresee the replacement of cash in the country, and that she believes “the risks outweigh the benefits” in regard to a retail CBDC.