ChainCatcher news, senior banking officials and financial executives from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland discussed the possibility of shutting down mBridge at a meeting held in Washington. The discussion stemmed from concerns about remarks made by Russian President Putin at the opening ceremony of the BRICS summit in Kazan, where Putin proposed the idea of establishing an alternative international payment system dominated by BRICS countries.
mBridge is a cross-border payment system operated by central banks in China, Thailand, UAE and Hong Kong (with Saudi Arabia joining as a new member this year), and supported by BIS Innovation Hub. mBridge uses distributed ledger technology to achieve faster payments bypassing intermediary banks.