What is Project mBridge, the China-led payment platform that Saudi Arabia has quit
Saudi Arabia's central bank has withdrawn from Project mBridge, a multi-central-bank-digital-currency (CBDC) cross-border payment platform; the exit reportedly took place in 2025 but was not disclosed publicly at the time.
Project mBridge began in 2021 as a joint initiative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub with the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, aimed at enabling faster, cheaper cross-border payment and settlement using central bank digital currencies on a shared ledger.
Saudi Arabia's central bank had joined the project as a full participant in 2024, with Macao's Monetary Authority joining most recently, in 2026.
The Bank for International Settlements formally ended its direct role in the project in October 2024, once it reached "minimum viable product" stage, handing operational control to the participating central banks; India's Reserve Bank holds observer status in the project.
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and India's Digital Rupee (e₹)
A Central Bank Digital Currency is a digital form of a country's fiat currency, issued and backed directly by the central bank — distinct from private cryptocurrencies, which are not sovereign-backed. CBDCs are typically designed in two forms: wholesale CBDC (for interbank/institutional settlement) and retail CBDC (for use by the general public, akin to digital cash). Project mBridge is fundamentally a wholesale, cross-border CBDC interoperability experiment.
Key Details
- India's Digital Rupee (e₹) was proposed in 2017 and launched by the Reserve Bank of India on December 1, 2022, with both wholesale and retail pilot segments
- e₹ circulation stood at ₹1,016.46 crore at the end of FY25, up from ₹234.04 crore a year earlier
- RBI has separately signalled interest in linking the e-Rupee with other countries' CBDCs to speed up cross-border settlement and expand the rupee's international use
- Legal backing for the e-Rupee comes from an amendment to the RBI Act, 1934 permitting the RBI to issue currency in digital form
Project mBridge is a real-world test bed for exactly the kind of wholesale, cross-border CBDC interoperability that the RBI is exploring bilaterally for the e-Rupee; India's observer status lets it study the platform's design without committing to full participation.
Project mBridge — Design, Purpose and Current Status
Project mBridge is a multi-CBDC cross-border payment platform built on a shared distributed-ledger infrastructure, allowing participating central banks to issue and transact directly in their own digital currencies without routing through the traditional correspondent-banking network. Its stated aim is to cut the cost, time and complexity of cross-border payments and foreign-exchange settlement.
Key Details
- Founded 2021 by the BIS Innovation Hub with the central banks/monetary authorities of China (People's Bank of China's Digital Currency Institute), Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE
- In a 2022 pilot, 20 commercial banks across the four founding jurisdictions settled 164 payment and foreign-exchange transactions worth over $22 million in six weeks directly on the platform, with transaction costs cut by up to half compared with correspondent banking
- BIS formally exited direct operational involvement in October 2024 after the platform reached "minimum viable product" stage; the platform is now run independently by the participating central banks
- More than 30 central banks/monetary authorities, plus the IMF, hold observer status; the Reserve Bank of India is among the observers, not a full participant
Saudi Arabia's quiet 2025 exit — only now becoming public — reduces the roster of full participants even as the project transitions to central-bank-only governance post-BIS, raising questions about the platform's future scale and China's relative weight within it as one of the few remaining large founding participants.
Alternatives to Correspondent Banking and SWIFT: mBridge in the Broader De-dollarisation Landscape
Cross-border payments have traditionally relied on the correspondent banking network and the SWIFT messaging system, both of which are dollar-centric and subject to sanctions leverage by the US and its allies. CBDC bridges like mBridge, along with initiatives such as BRICS Pay and India's own push for rupee-linked cross-border settlement, are part of a broader, ongoing effort by several economies to build settlement channels that reduce dependence on the dollar-based system.
Key Details
- BRICS Pay began operational deployment in 2026, working to interlink national payment systems — China's CIPS, India's UPI, Brazil's Pix, and Russia's SPFS — with fuller rollout targeted around the BRICS summit hosted by India during its 2026 chairship
- India has proposed BRICS members link their national CBDCs for cross-border transactions to cut costs and reduce reliance on intermediary banks, while stating it does not support a single BRICS-wide bloc currency or network that would replicate mBridge's centralised-platform model
- RBI has separately pursued bilateral local-currency trade settlement arrangements as an alternative route to reduce dollar dependence
- China's heavy involvement in mBridge (as a founding partner since 2021) has drawn scrutiny given the broader context of US-led sanctions risk and de-dollarisation debates
Saudi Arabia's exit from a China-anchored platform, even as India advances its own CBDC-linkage proposals through the BRICS finance track it currently chairs, illustrates the competing and sometimes overlapping approaches — platform-based (mBridge) versus interoperability-based (BRICS Pay/bilateral CBDC links) — that countries are testing to reduce dollar-settlement dependence.
Bank for International Settlements (BIS) — Role and Mandate
The BIS, established in 1930 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is often called the "central bank for central banks." Its core mandate is to foster international monetary and financial cooperation and to serve as a bank, research hub and standard-setting forum for its member central banks; its Innovation Hub (through which mBridge was incubated) experiments with fintech and CBDC use cases on behalf of member central banks.
Key Details
- BIS founded 1930 under the Hague Agreement; among the world's oldest international financial institutions
- Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with representative offices including Hong Kong and Mexico City
- BIS does not hold accounts for individuals or governments — its clientele is central banks
- The BIS Innovation Hub incubates and eventually hands off successful CBDC/fintech pilots (as with mBridge) once they mature beyond the experimental stage
BIS's October 2024 exit from direct involvement in mBridge — handing the platform to the central banks themselves — is consistent with the Innovation Hub's stated model of incubating a project only up to the minimum-viable-product stage before stepping back.
- Project mBridge founded: 2021, by BIS Innovation Hub with China, Hong Kong, Thailand and UAE central banks/monetary authorities
- Saudi Arabia: joined as full participant 2024; exited 2025 (disclosed publicly only around September 2026)
- Macao Monetary Authority: joined 2026
- BIS formally exited direct project involvement: October 2024 (post minimum-viable-product stage)
- 2022 pilot results: 20 banks, 4 jurisdictions, 164 transactions, over $22 million settled in six weeks; costs cut up to 50% versus correspondent banking
- Observer participants: 30+ central banks plus the IMF, including India's RBI (observer, not full participant)
- India's Digital Rupee (e₹): launched December 1, 2022; circulation ₹1,016.46 crore at end of FY25