The Banque de France, which is France’s Central Bank, has been trying out blockchain technology and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to see how they could benefit financial markets. They did this by running tests in stages. In December 2021, they finished the first part of their testing with CBDC. They worked together with a group of private companies led by HSBC for the final step. This involved creating a digital bond using blockchain and then using CBDC for a different way of completing the transaction. The experiment went well and covered the entire process of using digital assets. This included creating the assets, different companies buying them, and even paying interest using a different currency after converting.

The Banque de France believes platform interoperability is critical to maximizing the benefits of DLT applied to financial markets. That is to say that they feel that it’s really important for different blockchain networks to work together when applying them in financial markets. They believe that if data and things like money can smoothly move between different blockchains at the same time, it would be a big advantage. The Banque de France and HSBC have shown that this kind of smooth movement between different systems is possible traditionally. It is crucial because it helps different networks that make markets work exist together without any problems.