Today the BIS and Reserve Bank of India announced the 2023 edition of the G20 Techsprint, with applications open until June 4. The three topics include cross border central bank digital currency (CBDC), FX and liquidity solutions for emerging currencies, and anti money laundering (AML) technologies. India currently holds the Presidency of the G20.
All three topics address issues that are part of the G20 cross border payment program to enable faster and cheaper payments. In many ways, the AML one might be the most intractable. Many cross border payments seem inefficient because AML processes slow things down, with many transfers stopped for extra checks. Much of the work to gain efficiencies could be lost in this single area.
“While preserving financial integrity, payments should be able to flow seamlessly across borders and between payment systems to promote competition,” said the Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, Cecilia Skingsley.
The cross border CBDC topic is broader than it looks. It encompasses interoperability solutions between CBDCs and also between CBDC and domestic payment systems. Other sub-topics could include privacy solutions, embedded supervision and governance.
India recently announced cross border CBDC trials with the UAE. And the UAE, in turn, is a participant in MBridge, the multi-CBDC solution involving the BIS and the central banks of China, Hong Kong and Thailand.
Shortlisted Techsprint solutions will receive INR 8,00,000 ($9,800) to develop their projects and the winners of each of the three topic areas will be awarded INR 40,00,000 ($49,000).
Last year the main topic of the Techsprint was CBDC; the winners were dragonfly fintech, bitt/IDEMIA and Partior.
