Project Aber event

wholesale-cbdc-project · PageRank 0.0015

Also known as: Aber

Overview

Project Aber was a joint wholesale central bank digital currency experiment by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Central Bank of the UAE, announced in 2019 with results published in November 2020. 'Aber' means 'crossing boundaries' in Arabic. It was the first dual-issued wholesale CBDC pilot built on distributed ledger technology, used by the two central banks and participating commercial banks as a settlement unit for domestic and cross-border interbank transactions. The final report concluded that a distributed payment system offered significant improvement over centralised systems for such settlements while meeting financial privacy requirements.

Within the DeFi Intel graph, Project Aber connects to 2 tracked entities, most strongly to Central Bank of the UAE, Saudi Central Bank.

Relations

Top connections in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph (confidence-weighted, 2 of 2 total).

Frequently asked questions

Which institutions ran Project Aber?

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, together with participating commercial banks in both countries.

What kind of CBDC did Aber test?

A wholesale, dual-issued CBDC on distributed ledger technology used as a settlement unit for domestic and cross-border interbank transactions — not a retail currency.

What was the project's conclusion?

The two central banks reported that a distributed payment system offered significant improvement over centralised payment systems for domestic and cross-border commercial bank settlement, and could meet financial privacy demands.