Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered have carried out the first digital currency transfer and swap on the new Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN).
Unveiled earlier this year, the UDPN is a DLT-underpinned messaging backbone that promises to provide interoperability between stablecoins and CBDCs to enable connectivity between any business IT system and regulated digital currencies.
The network - set up by GFT Group and Red Date Technology - describes itself as a "gateway for businesses and financial institutions to use regulated digital currencies in cross-border transactions". In this respect it could be seen as a competitor to bank-to-bank messaging network Swift, which has been conducting its own research into blockchain interoperability.
In the first proof-of-concept for the network, Deutsche and Standard Chartered's SC Ventures executed a real-time on-chain transfer and swap test transactions between USDC and EURS stablecoins on the infrastructure.
SC Ventures set up a development environment and used UDPN SDKs and APIs to create decentralized identities and linked digital currency wallets. It then initiated multiple transfers and swaps of synthetic USDC and EURS to digital currency wallets of Deutsche Bank.
In parallel, Deutsche Bank initiated multiple transfers and swaps to SC Ventures’ digital currency accounts via a graphical user interface integrated within their dedicated UDPN environment.
Thorsten Neumann, CTO, SC Ventures, says: "This initiative brings the industry together to identify opportunities to unlock economic value in newly emerging digital currencies.
"Tokenised forms of currency will inevitably become a part of the new financial landscape. Financial service providers and fintechs are well-positioned to experiment with stablecoins and CBDC use-cases that benefit from the finality of on-chain transactions."
With several banks, technology firms and payment service providers onboard, the network will carry out another 11 PoCs.