Euroclear announced that it had invested in [Fnality|https://www.fnality.org/home], a regulated consortium of #blockchain payments.
Previously known as Utility Settlement Coin (USC), the Fnality was owned by 16 financial institutions including UBS, BNY Mellon and Nasdaq. Euroclear has Central Securities Depositories in Europe (CSDs), which are located across Europe. These include Belgium, Finland and France as well as Ireland, Sweden, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Ireland. Fnality will launch the first currency payment with sterling pounds deposited at Bank of England in October.
This makes it a wholesale synthetic central bank digital cryptocurrency (#CBDC). It is intended for use by institutions for settlement purposes, particularly for blockchain-based transactions. Tokenized cash can be seen as part of many DLT systems, which aim to make securities transactions faster and more efficient with less risk. Tokenized cash allows for same-day securities settlement (T0), regardless of whether it is stocks, bonds, or funds. This reduces post-trade risk and opens up new possibilities such as intraday FX Swaps and intraday liquidity savings.
Euroclear does have a UK office, but the majority of its operations are within the EU. Only four of the 15 Fnality member institutions came from the EU before Euroclear joined. This timing is possible because the EU DLT Pilot Regime for Securities – an extensive sandbox to tokenized securities settlement and settlement – will likely start in the latter part of the year.
« We are pleased to be working with Fnality and our clients in shaping a cutting-edge solution on wholesale digital cash and digital securities settlement for the benefit of the whole industry » Lieve Somerey CEO Euroclear Group.
Santander and Natwest participated in an initial payment to Fnality for security issuances. Although the Fnality idea has been around since 2016, its launch was expedited by an 2021 Bank of England decision to permit omnibus central banks accounts that can co-mingle money from various institutions. To enable Fnality to use tokenized money, this account is required. Fnality can use its settlement token outside the real-time gross settlement system’s (RTGS) hours if there is prefunding.
Euroclear was part of wholesale CBDC trials last year to settle government bond transactions with Banque de France, three French commercial banks and HSBC. Euroclear was involved in many DLT-based projects. These included payment trials with LiquidShare, as well multiple blockchain paper experiments. Adhara is the main partner in blockchain technology, while Clearmatics and UBS initially created this concept. \[…]
