The Swiss National Bank has published the results of Project Promissa, a joint experiment with the Bank for International Settlements’ Innovation Hub and the World Bank, which tested whether distributed ledger technology could digitise and streamline multilateral development bank (MDB) promissory notes used to manage member countries’ multi-year financial commitments. The project built a proof-of-concept platform for tokenised promissory notes and concluded that the approach is technically feasible and could reduce time and costs for MDBs, central banks and ministries of finance. The proof of concept is designed to replace paper-based notes and automate manual processes across the note lifecycle, from issuance through payment and archiving. The platform aims to provide a single source of truth, support multiparty signatures, and preserve confidentiality while maintaining each party’s ownership, control and decision-making power over its promissory notes. Testing involved participants from seven countries, with the International Monetary Fund participating as an observer. The final report notes that the platform can be tailored to different requirements, but further work would be needed to make it operational.

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