The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has proposed a new cross-border payment platform called the XC platform that could benefit individual and institutional users through lower fees and faster transaction times. The platform would provide interoperability among assets and money tokenized by the private sector without requiring central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions or a single ledger. However, it offers the option for CBDCs to be used in the platform.
The XC platform is designed on the model of CBDC infrastructure and would offer a trusted single ledger for standardized digital representations of central bank reserves in any currency to be exchanged. It includes a settlement layer with a single ledger that would allow the trading of tokenized domestic central bank reserves and a programming layer that offers the opportunity to innovate and customize services. An information layer would contain necessary anti-money laundering (AML) details to meet trust conditions and privacy protections.
IMF officials revealed their new platform concept at a roundtable on CBDC policy held in conjunction with the central bank of Morocco and proposed that the platform could be adapted for domestic wholesale and retail CBDC. The XC platform would help central banks intervene in foreign exchange markets, aggregate information on capital flows and resolve disputes.
The proposal is similar to one made by Bank for International Settlements general manager Agustín Carstens in February. The IMF’s Fintech Note coauthored by Tobias Adrian, IMF director of the monetary and capital markets department, provided more details on the proposed platform.