Major central banks are increasingly taking interest in digital currencies and blockchain technology, realizing their potential to transform global banking industry. The People’s Bank of China, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank of England have already expressed their optimism on digitized version of their national currencies.

Canada seems to be way ahead of its contemporaries in this context. According to latest reports, the Bank of Canada has been experimenting with a digital version of its currency on the blockchain.

FT.com reported that in a private presentation in Calgary on Wednesday, the Canadian central bank revealed that it was developing the CAD-Coin, a digital version of the Canadian dollar.

Codenamed as ‘Project Jasper’, the initiative will involve issuing, transferring and settling central bank assets on a distributed ledger. The project is being carried out in collaboration with several of Canada’s biggest banks, including Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank), Scotiabank and Bank of Montreal.

The experiment is being run by R3 blockchain consortium, Forbes reported. Although the event was closed for media, Kyle Kemper, the executive director of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, tweeted a slide that outlines how the system works:

Sources familiar with the experiment told Forbes that the central bank currently has no plans to issue digital fiat currency. More details are expected to be revealed on Friday.

“The central bank is really innovating here, but it’s innovating in cahoots with the largest banks in Canada first as a project but ultimately this can be the CAD COIN,” says Kemper, adding that this marks the first step in the “blockchain-ification” of banks, according to Forbes.