French Depository Bank issues €100 million digital bond to pilot wCBDC settlement

 Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), the French deposit bank, recently issued a €100 million ($108 million) digital bond, settling it using the Bank of France's DL3S DLT platform and its wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) pilot. The transaction is part of the European Central Bank's wholesale DLT settlement pilot, which will end this month.

The Bank of France avoids using the term wholesale CBDC, instead referring to it as the tokenization of central bank currency. For the issuance by CDC, it needed to synchronize the issuance of digital native notes (DNN) on Euroclear's D-FMI platform with settlement on the DL3S of the central bank. According to French law, DNN is issued anonymously.

In addition, the French CBDC pilot solution has been used for other digital bond issuances, including a €30 million sovereign bond issued by Slovenia and small commercial notes issued by Dutch banks, as well as several simulated DL3S experiments.