A trial cross-border payment using eAUD, the Reserve Bank’s pilot digital currency, proved its value by speeding up the process, making it more transparent and reducing counterparty risk, the pilot participant involved in the transaction claims. Payment company Monoova demonstrated the cross-border settlement working with one of its existing foreign exchange clients, NexPay, a specialist provider of inbound remittance services for foreign students studying in Australia. A payment to NexPay from a client in Japan was settled by Monoova to NexPay’s pilot CBDC wallet.  Under normal circumstances, a Monoova FX client disbursing foreign currency into Australia would exchange the foreign currency for Australian dollars, with Monoova working with a banking partner to complete the payout or holding the funds on account until the client issues disbursement instructions. Monoova chief technology officer Nicholas Tan said: “Under the CBDC pilot, instead of providing fiat Australian dollars in a balance on its platform, Monoova provides clients with Australian dollars in pilot CBDC on its platform. “This enables us to settle instantly for any funds that come to Australia. Clients can independently verify account balances on the blockchain rather than rely on reporting from intermediaries. “And if clients need to hold money for a period of time before making disbursements, they can do so without counterparty risk. “We did this while complying with the standard regulatory requirements of our Australian Financial Services Licence.” Monoova was one of 14 pilot participants chosen by the RBA and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre to test a variety of use cases for eAUD.  The pilot program was completed at the end of May and included offline payments, tokenised foreign exchange settlement, custody, Web3 commerce, tokenised bills, corporate bond settlements, livestock auctions and automation of goods and services tax lodgement. ANZ reported that it worked with Grollo Carbon Ventures to trade Australian Carbon Credit Units. ANZ tokenised ACCUs and issued stablecoin, allowing GCV to purchase tokenised ACCUs with settlement occurring via a smart contract. Canvas Digital arranged a transfer of eAUD into USDC stablecoin. The trade, involving DigitalX and fund manager TAF Capital was settled instantly, “demonstrating one of the benefits of a CBDC – real-time 24/7 international remittance”. eAUD is a general purpose CBDC issued as a liability of the Reserve Bank for use in the “real world applications” of the pilot. eAUD is denominated in Australian dollars and the smallest denomination is one cent. The RBA and DFCRC will publish a project report at the end of June.