Sweden’s central bank The Riksbank is to begin testing its e-krona central bank digital currency (CBDC) with external partners to assess how a digital krona would operate within a real world banking and payments infrastructure.

The Riksbank has already begun trialling a blockchain-based technical CBDC solution in an isolated test environment and is now working with Handelsbanken to evaluate its implementation within the internal systems of a commercial bank.

“Involving external actors as participants in the test environment will make it possible for the Riksbank to evaluate the integration between the participants’ existing systems and the technical platform for the e-krona pilot,” the Swedish central bank says.

“The Riksbank will, for instance, be testing an integration of the payment flows developed during the first year of the pilot with the participants’ internal systems.

“The e-krona pilot is therefore moving on from only having simulated participants to cooperation with external participants in the test environment.”

The Riksbank began testing a digital version of the Swedish krona in February 2020.

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