Mastercard announced on Monday 1 June that it is taking part in the Eurosystem’s ‘TIPS Cross-Currency’ pilot project, which is intended to test cross-border instant payments between different currencies.
Having been in development since 2021 by the Eurosystem in cooperation with the central banks of Denmark and Sweden, the project aims to enable cross-border instant payments between different currencies through a mechanism allowing the simultaneous exchange of two currencies directly on central bank infrastructures, thereby reducing the risks linked to the settlement of international transactions.
Mastercard said on Monday that it was “among the first participants” as a payment service provider (‘PSP’) to validate the full processing of an instant payment between euros and Danish kroner by relying directly on the ‘TIPS’ infrastructure.
The latter is among the key tools presented by the Eurosystem to strengthen the European Union’s strategic autonomy, the resilience and competitiveness of its payments ecosystem, as well as the international role of the euro (see EUROPE 13842/6).
With regard to this, the campaigning organisation ‘Positive Money Europe’ told Agence Europe on Monday that it is “imperative” that the Eurosystem “protects its sovereignty in such a way that it is interoperable with other systems around the world, without the need for dominant American-owned businesses, such as Mastercard”.
“We want to see a European system, for the European economy. The best way for this to happen is for there to be a digital euro that interacts with other central bank digital currencies, which in turn contributes to the development of a multi-CBDC cross-border payment system and facilitates international transactions in multiple currencies, including the euro”, said policy officer Laura Casonato. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)