Deutsche Börse post-trade subsidiary Clearstream has joined the European Central Bank’s (ECB) trials to explore the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) for wholesale central bank money settlement in light of the development of a digital Euro.
Clearstream, the only central securities depository to participate in wave 1 of the trials, will utilise all three of its CSDs (German, Luxembourg and international CSD), and its digital post-trade platform D7.
Jens Hachmeister, head of issuer services and new digital markets, Clearstream, said: “Clearstream’s participation in the ECB trials is a significant milestone in our digitisation journey: we are expanding our D7 digital securities infrastructure with DLT components and fostering connections with the main digital payment solutions across the Eurosystem. We are thrilled to further collectively shape the future of an inter-connected digital European settlement landscape together with the ECB and our broad participant base. Of course, Clearstream will leverage the trial insights to further enhance D7 for the industry.”
The ECB trials will be conducted using real central bank money with the time frame set for May to November 2024. Clearstream will connect to all three central bank digital offerings: Bundesbank’s Trigger Solution, Banca d’Italia’s TIPS Hash-link and Banque de France’s Full DLT Interoperability.
Clearstream hopes to determine the feasibility of using DLT for wholesale transaction processing, using tokenised securities. This includes conducting euro-denominated issuances and delivery-versus-payment (DvP) transactions across different use-cases and payment models.
To support the trials, Clearstream has enhanced its digital post-trade platform D7 with respective DLT capabilities. This was done in collaboration with Google Cloud, leveraging the strategic partnership of Deutsche Börse Group and Google Cloud. Clearstream’s D7 has a track record with more than 25,000 digital securities issuances.
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