Commercial Bank of Dubai Settles Two-Way Digital Dirham Trades With Bank of China
Both lenders sent and received wholesale Digital Dirham on Jisr, the central bank's cross-border settlement platform, testing two-way flows between the UAE and China.
Commercial Bank of Dubai has moved wholesale Digital Dirham both ways with Bank of China, a transaction that ran on Jisr, the Central Bank of the UAE's platform for cross-border settlement.
Each bank sent funds and each bank received them. Commercial Bank of Dubai said the transaction ran end to end on Jisr, from initiation through to final settlement. Two-way flow, not a one-directional test — that is the part worth pausing on.
The transfers feed into cross-border Digital Dirham payment work between the UAE and China and sit inside Commercial Bank of Dubai's role in the central bank's Digital Dirham programme. The lender has taken part in earlier CBUAE cross-border projects built around wholesale central bank digital currency.
Jisr is built for cross-border CBDC settlement and connects the UAE to each market that joins. The Digital Dirham itself belongs to the CBUAE's Financial Infrastructure Transformation Programme, which targets faster digital change across UAE financial services.
Dr Bernd van Linder, the bank's chief executive, described the contribution as bringing banking expertise to bear on building cross-border payment capability. Vladislavs Mironovs, chief digital officer, said completing the Bank of China transaction on Jisr shows the bank can execute cross-border Digital Dirham payments.
For Commercial Bank of Dubai, that Jisr role forms part of a corporate payments strategy resting on stronger links to markets outside the UAE. A corridor that works in one direction only is of limited use to a treasurer moving money between Dubai and Shanghai; settlement rails that reach more than one jurisdiction are the point of the exercise.
The bank said it intends to continue alongside CBUAE, Bank of China and other partners on the Digital Dirham, with that work carried out under the central bank's requirements.
