With an emphasis on real-time cross-border and cross-currency payments, the Hong Kong central bank and the Banque de France are working together to test interoperability between their wholesale CBDC infrastructure, the HKMA's Ensemble Sandbox and the BDF's DL3S2.

The objective of the cross-border experiment is to investigate methods for improving the efficiency of cross-border transaction settlement and promoting interoperability among financial market infrastructures across various jurisdictions.

First deputy governor of the BDF Denis Beau states: "We have the chance to work with the HKMA on various use cases for payment versus payment between the tokenized form of the Hong Kong dollar and the Euro, as we have set the clear objective to improve cross-border payments brought about by the Eurosystem exploratory work."

Project Ensemble, which focuses on tokenized deposits issued by commercial banks and made accessible to the public, was launched by the HKMA in March. The HKMA will introduce a wCBDC Sandbox this year, which is the central component of the project. Its purpose is to investigate and test use cases related to tokenization, including electronic bills of lading, treasury management, carbon credits, green bonds, airplanes, and electric vehicle charging stations.

"With the collaboration between the HKMA’s Ensemble Sandbox and the BDF’s DL3S underway, we look forward to joining hands with the BDF to further explore different cross-border payment solutions and use cases, to promote financial market connectivity and push forward the development of the global tokenization market," says Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the HKMA.