Saudi Arabia has officially withdrawn from mBridge, a high-profile, China-backed cross-border digital currency project designed to facilitate direct transactions between central banks, according to a recent report by the Financial Times. <\/p>\n
The Saudi Central Bank, known as SAMA, joined the mBridge initiative as a full participant in June 2024. However, according to the Financial Times, SAMA ended its participation after completing a proof of concept on May 13, 2025, citing a statement issued by the central bank. SAMA indicated that its departure was part of a planned conclusion to its involvement in this specific phase of the project.<\/p>\n
The mBridge initiative was originally established in 2021 through a collaborative effort between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. The overarching aim of the multi-jurisdictional project has been to make international cross-border payments significantly faster, cheaper, and more efficient by leveraging central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.<\/p>\n
Rather than relying on a single stablecoin or traditional intermediary correspondent banking networks, the mBridge platform allows participating central banks to issue and transact directly in their own sovereign digital currencies on a shared ledger. This infrastructure is built to support both cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions in a streamlined, decentralized ledger environment.<\/p>\n
The project continued its technical development under the direct oversight of the BIS until October 2024. At that juncture, the international organization handed operational control over to the participating central banks after mBridge successfully reached its minimum viable product stage. At the time of the handover, then-BIS General Manager Agust\u00edn Carstens publicly stated that the departure of the BIS from the project’s daily management was not politically motivated.<\/p>\n
Despite these assurances, the mBridge project has consistently drawn intense scrutiny from Western policymakers, particularly in the United States. A comprehensive 2024 report published by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission highlighted concerns that mBridge could eventually evolve to provide an alternative cross-border settlement system for countries seeking to bypass or evade traditional Western financial infrastructure and US economic sanctions.<\/p>\n
Cointelegraph reached out to the Saudi Central Bank to seek further comment regarding the motivations and implications of its withdrawal from the digital currency arrangement, but did not receive a response prior to the time of publication.<\/p>\n
China Weighs Digital Currencies\u2019 Role in Cross-Border Payments<\/p>\n
As mBridge continues to navigate its post-BIS governance structure and shifting geopolitical dynamics, China\u2019s central bank has increasingly focused its attention on the broader role that stablecoins and digital currencies could play in global cross-border payments as their adoption expands worldwide.<\/p>\n
In June, Wang Xin, the director of the People\u2019s Bank of China Research Bureau, publicly called for much closer monitoring of both stablecoins and central bank digital currencies within cross-border payment flows. He also emphasized the necessity for greater international regulatory coordination to manage potential financial stability risks associated with these emerging payment technologies.<\/p>\n
Wang’s commentary arrived just months after Chinese financial authorities implemented stricter regulatory measures restricting the unauthorized issuance of renminbi-pegged stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets within its jurisdiction, including restrictions targeting activities by foreign entities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia has officially withdrawn from mBridge, a high-profile, China-backed cross-border digital currency project designed to facilitate direct transactions between central banks, according to a recent report by the Financial Times. The Saudi Central Bank, known as SAMA, joined the mBridge initiative as a full participant in June 2024. However, according to the Financial Times, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[933],"tags":[1793,301,935,1192,934,1796,953,1795,394,1792,936,1794],"class_list":["post-1123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency-and-web3","tag-arabia","tag-backed","tag-blockchain","tag-china","tag-crypto","tag-currency","tag-digital","tag-mbridge","tag-project","tag-saudi","tag-web3","tag-withdraws"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}