The Banque de France, the central bank of France, has announced that it is conducting an interbank blockchain experiment.
The French bank said in the release that earlier in July, it tested the blockchain technology on SEPA creditor Identifier, one of the distributed ledgers that it manages. This trail was the first publically acknowledged blockchain trial by the bank.
The blockchain trail was accompanied by the startup Labo Blockchain in cooperation with the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and numerous other French banking groups. The experiment aimed to gauge the consequences of possible decentralizing ledger management functions, in addition to technology and security issues.
“This experiment enables all participating banks to share their analyses on the impacts of and opportunities provided by this technology,” the release stated.
As of October 2016, a blockchain infrastructure was tested to create SCIs between participants. There were also working meetings on professional, technical and legal aspects. The Banque de France provided elements of the software suite, which these participants installed in an external cloud or in their own trial IT system.
The bank plans to conduct a comprehensive assessment in the coming months to consider the findings of this experiment. Also, the French bank will create a presentation on this topic at the conference that is organized on 6 January 2017 by the Comité National des Paiements Scripturaux (French Payments Committee) in Paris.
