mBridge is the multi-CBDC (central bank digital currency) cross-border settlement project that originated as an Inthanon-LionRock bilateral wholesale-CBDC bridge between HKMA and Bank of Thailand in 2019, evolved into a multilateral platform under the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre with the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, China (PBoC Digital Currency Institute), and the United Arab Emirates as founding participants, and graduated out of the BIS Innovation Hub perimeter in late 2024 to operate under post-graduation governance led by the participating central banks. As of 2025-2026 the named participant set includes HKMA, Bank of Thailand, PBoC Digital Currency Institute, Central Bank of UAE, and Saudi Central Bank (BIS mBridge reference page). For an institutional tokenisation operator in APAC, mBridge is the most consequential live cross-border tokenised wholesale-money infrastructure outside the Project Agorá cohort, and the worked example of a multi-CBDC platform that has moved beyond pilot into post-graduation production-style governance.
What it is
mBridge is a permissioned distributed-ledger platform on which the participating central banks' wholesale CBDCs can be issued, transferred, and settled atomically against each other for cross-border wholesale payment and FX settlement use cases. The structural design is that each central bank operates a node, issues its own wholesale CBDC on the platform under its own monetary-authority oversight, and the platform provides the multilateral settlement primitive that allows commercial-bank participants to move balances across currencies without correspondent-banking intermediation.
The project's lineage runs from Project Inthanon at Bank of Thailand (single-currency wholesale-CBDC research starting 2018), through Project Inthanon-LionRock with HKMA in 2019-2020 (the first bilateral CBDC bridge in APAC), into the multilateral mBridge platform under the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre with PBoC Digital Currency Institute and Central Bank of UAE joining as founding multilateral participants. Saudi Central Bank joined as a named participant ahead of the BIS Innovation Hub graduation in late 2024.
The graduation from BIS Innovation Hub governance was announced in October-November 2024, with the project transitioning to post-graduation governance led by the participating central banks. The structural implication is that mBridge is no longer a Hub-incubated pilot but a multilateral platform operated under the participating central banks' direct governance, with the BIS retaining a research and policy-coordination role rather than a project-ownership role.
Operating model
mBridge operates as a permissioned multi-CBDC platform with each participating central bank running a node, issuing its own wholesale CBDC, and admitting domestic commercial banks as platform participants. The atomic settlement primitive allows participating commercial banks to settle cross-border payments and FX trades by exchanging tokenised central-bank money across currencies without an intermediary correspondent bank. The settlement model is wholesale-tier rather than retail-tier: only commercial banks (and in some configurations other regulated financial institutions) admitted under each participating central bank's perimeter can hold and transact platform balances.
The named participant set has been progressively expanded. Founding multilateral participants were HKMA, Bank of Thailand, PBoC Digital Currency Institute, and Central Bank of UAE; Saudi Central Bank was added ahead of the 2024 graduation. The commercial-bank participant set on each currency leg has historically included the major domestic banks of each participating jurisdiction; specific named commercial-bank participants vary by currency leg and by use case (BIS mBridge reference).
Live transaction flow has been demonstrated across multiple use cases including cross-border payment, FX settlement, and trade-finance settlement legs. The MVP (minimum viable product) achieved real-value transactions during the BIS Innovation Hub phase, with the post-graduation governance phase scaling the production scope. Specific period-by-period transaction volume, settled value, and use-case breakdown should be checked against current participating-central-bank disclosure rather than asserted from this entry.
The cash-leg architecture is the wholesale-CBDC pattern: each currency leg is a tokenised liability of the issuing central bank, the highest-quality settlement asset by definition. There is no commercial-bank tokenised-deposit layer on the mBridge platform itself, although the participating commercial banks may use mBridge balances as the cross-border settlement leg for transactions whose other legs (domestic origination, customer-facing layer) clear through commercial-bank rails domestically.
Why it matters
Three reasons. First, mBridge is the only multilateral wholesale-CBDC platform in the world to have moved past the pilot phase into post-graduation governance with multiple central banks committed to continued operation. The structural significance is that the project has cleared the threshold question of whether multi-CBDC settlement can move beyond a single-pilot demonstration into an ongoing platform operated by the participating monetary authorities. No other multi-CBDC platform has cleared that threshold (Project Agorá is structurally a tokenised-commercial-bank-money platform with central-bank money as one settlement leg, which is a different architectural pattern; Project Mariana was a three-currency demonstration without continued post-pilot operation).
Second, the geographical and currency mix. mBridge brings together one of the largest emerging-market currencies (CNY through PBoC Digital Currency Institute), a major regional commercial-banking centre (HKD through HKMA), an APAC trade-corridor currency (THB through Bank of Thailand), the leading Middle East trade-corridor currency (AED through Central Bank of UAE), and the largest Gulf petrocurrency (SAR through Saudi Central Bank). The structural read is that mBridge is positioned as a non-USD-anchored cross-border wholesale settlement platform connecting Asia, the Middle East, and (through the AED-CNY corridor) the broader Belt and Road trade flow. The political-economic implications of that positioning have been actively debated in US-led trade press but the operational reality is the platform's continued production-style operation.
Third, the implication for cross-border tokenisation infrastructure. As regional tokenised-deposit platforms (Kinexys BDA, Partior, the Japanese consortium platforms) and cross-border tokenised-asset settlement (Project Ensemble HKD wholesale tokenisation, Progmat-Japan tokenised-deposit pilots) mature, the integration question with mBridge as the cross-border wholesale-CBDC settlement leg becomes operationally interesting. The interaction between mBridge and the other regional infrastructure has been thinly disclosed in current public coverage.
The competitive map is partly Project Agorá on the cross-border tokenised-commercial-bank-money side, partly bilateral central-bank settlement bridges (the BoE-MAS bridge, the Banque de France-MAS bridge, others), and partly the SWIFT-led tokenised-payments interoperability work that has been positioned as an alternative to multi-CBDC platforms.
Recent moves
- 2025-2026. Cumulative platform throughput crossed USD 55.5 billion across more than 4,000 cross-border transactions, with the e-CNY accounting for approximately 95 percent of platform volume according to coverage reported through Cointelegraph and Ledger Insights (Cointelegraph via TradingView, 2025; Ledger Insights). The 95 percent e-CNY share is the structurally consequential read: it confirms operational dominance of one currency leg even though the post-graduation governance was nominally multilateral. The figure is the first public scale read on mBridge under post-graduation governance and is the reference benchmark against which any subsequent platform-throughput disclosure should be compared.
- 2025-2026. Public coverage on mBridge has been structurally thinner since the BIS graduation, which is consistent with the post-graduation governance shift away from BIS-led communications. Specific operational milestones, additional participant additions, and use-case expansions are not consistently disclosed.
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- Continued production-style operation under post-graduation governance, with specific transaction volume and use-case scope tracked through participating-central-bank disclosure rather than centralised platform reporting.
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- Saudi Central Bank confirmed as a named participant ahead of the BIS graduation, expanding the participant set beyond the original HKMA, Bank of Thailand, PBoC Digital Currency Institute, and Central Bank of UAE quartet.
- October-November 2024. mBridge graduated from BIS Innovation Hub governance, with the project transitioning to post-graduation governance led by the participating central banks (BIS).
Open questions
- The current operational governance structure post-graduation. Which central bank holds the lead operational role, how decisions are made across the participant set, and what the published cadence of public reporting looks like.
- Specific period-by-period transaction volume and use-case breakdown across the platform. Pre-graduation BIS-led reporting included some figures; post-graduation reporting cadence is less consistent.
- Additional central-bank participants beyond the current five. Public coverage has referenced exploratory interest from other regional central banks; the formal admission process and any pending additions are not in current disclosure.
- The interaction with other regional tokenised-asset and tokenised-deposit infrastructure (Project Ensemble HKD wholesale tokenisation, Progmat-Japan tokenised-deposit pilots, Kinexys BDA cross-border integration). The structural fit is obvious; the live integration design is not consistently disclosed.
- The relationship with Project Agorá. The two platforms are structurally complementary (mBridge for cross-border tokenised wholesale CBDC, Agorá for cross-border tokenised commercial bank money), with overlapping participating central banks. Whether the two will operate as parallel rails, integrate, or remain structurally separate is not in current public coverage.
- Agentic commerce posture. mBridge is structurally a wholesale-tier platform with commercial-bank participants only; the question of whether AI agents could interact with platform balances would route through the commercial-bank layer rather than the platform itself.