China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE conducted international settlements in CBDC

Monetary regulators in China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates conducted test cross-border payments with their issued digital currencies.

The transfers, which took place between Aug. 15 and Sept. 23, involved transactions with real value. They were processed through Mbridge's distributed payment registry, which was created in 2019.

During the trial, 20 commercial banks used the platform to make various types of payments to corporate customers, mostly in international trade:

More than 160 cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions totaling more than $22 million were made on the platform.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country's largest lending institution, and its subsidiaries Abu Dhabi and ICBC (Asia) in Hong Kong participated in the pilot project.

This experiment could have a negative impact on the role of the U.S. dollar in foreign trade, as banks will be able to carry out settlements directly without U.S. currency.