Mandala: BIS’s New Initiative for Smoother Cross-Border Payments

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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has collaborated with central banks from Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Malaysia to test Project Mandala—a system designed to enhance cross-border payment speed and efficiency.

On October 28, Singapore’s Monetary Authority confirmed the success of the experiment in a blog post, explaining that Mandala’s decentralized compliance model balances customer privacy with regulatory reporting and real-time oversight.

Highlighting the difficulty of navigating various compliance frameworks, BIS suggests that Project Mandala could simplify adherence by automating compliance procedures. The project is currently at the proof-of-concept phase.

Mandala’s compatibility spans digital assets like CBDCs, tokenized deposits, and traditional systems, such as Swift, ensuring flexibility across payment types.
Mandala is pioneering the compliance-by-design approach to improve cross-border payments without compromising privacy or the integrity of regulatory checks,
said Maha El Dimachki, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Centre.
Efforts to adapt to blockchain advancements aren’t new among financial institutions. Recently, we reported that Swift plans to launch pilot testing for digital asset transactions through its network by 2025.