Westpac Institutional Bank and Imperium Markets have implemented Chainlink in Project Acacia, a joint move from the Reserve Bank of Australia and Digital Finance CRC.
RBA and DFCRC explore new digital forms of money and their potential to create a central bank digital currency for wholesale payments in their Acacia project. The RBA also recognises that the industry is examining the potential for the tokenisation of assets as a way of increasing efficiency and reducing risk in issuance, trading, clearing and settlement.
Proof of concept for PayTo from Westpac
Westpac is now supporting the RBA to explore what digital currencies could look like in real-life scenarios, while giving customers access to new payment options securely. The company also made investments in its real-time payment capabilities, including PayTo, launched to digitalise processes and offer payment flexibility. PayTo is a digital alternative to direct debit payments, enabling visibility, control, transaction data, verified authorisation, secure storage, and minimal costs. PayTo operates on the New Payments Platform and settles transactions using the banks’ existing exchange settlement accounts with the RBA.
The proof of concept led by Westpac aims to demonstrate that PayTo can enable the settlement and clearing of large payments in the wholesale banking sector required to perform tokenised asset transactions. The testing is an opportunity for the company to experiment with the practical use of post-quantum cryptography, a feature in encryption that uses new algorithms designed to be resistant to possible future attacks from quantum computers.
The proof of concept is being developed in collaboration with Imperium Markets and Chainlink, and is projected to be completed in the upcoming months. The Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) is organising secure and compliant DvP settlement of tokenised assets in blockchain markets and the existing PayTo Australia domestic payment system. This is significant for supporting the adoption of digital assets and bringing institutional capital onchain.
