Launched at Davos during the World Economic Forum week, the Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN) is a DLT-underpinned messaging backbone focused on providing interoperability between the fast-growing number of different regulated stablecoins and CBDCs, and seamless connectivity between any business IT system and regulated digital currencies. At the Davos launch event, representatives from leading global financial institutions Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, The Bank of East Asia, and Akbank discussed the rapidly evolving world of digital currency, the importance of interoperability, and the need for an infrastructure to support these developments.
The UDPN has the potential to drive down the cost of digital payments and accelerate adoption by banks and businesses of all sizes.
Over two years in development, the UDPN is an advanced digital currency payments project that has achieved several significant milestones to date, including the launch of a UDPN Sandbox in July last year, in which multiple banks have been actively testing stablecoin transfer and swap (FX) transactions. A number of global Tier 1 banks will participate in a series of Use Case POCs this month which will demonstrate how the UDPN will solve the current and future challenges of integrating digital currency into daily business, banking, and payment scenarios. The first two POCs will involve two global banks testing UDPN's digital currency cross-border transfer and swap transaction capabilities, and also how the critical "Travel Rule" can be easily implemented on the UDPN between two financial institutions for anonymous stablecoin transfers.
The network was developed with contributions from global IT engineering and solutions provider GFT, decentralised cloud infrastructure company Red Date Technology, and TOKO, the digital asset creation engine delivered in collaboration with DLA Piper.
"The purpose of UDPN is to investigate a potential alternative to existing payments systems by enabling interoperability between fiat-backed tokens of stablecoins and regulated protocols," said Marika Lulay, CEO of GFT. "The decentralised approach and geographic breadth of participating firms, combined with the advanced technological solution deployed for these trials, set this network apart."
