“It’s not just an experiment, it will be real money equivalent to bank reserves, and the goal is to test real transactions with market participants,” Thomas Jordan, the bank’s chairman, explained at the Point Zero forum.
The official said he was concerned about the potential risks that retail digital currencies could have on the financial system. Their use would be more difficult to control:
“We are not ruling out never introducing a retail digital currency, but nevertheless, we will do the providential thing at this point.”
Earlier this year, Swiss banks faced a flood of banking requests from U.S. cryptocurrency companies. SEBA Bank and Sygnum Bank, which previously obtained a Swiss banking license and capital market license in Singapore, also faced a marked increase in requests from crypto firms. The banks declined to comment officially on the situation, simply confirming that “the inflow of customers from the U.S. to Swiss banks has become much greater.”
Earlier the state-owned Swiss bank PostFinance, the fifth-largest financial corporation in the country, announced its intention to add “a full range of cryptocurrency services” for its 2.5 million customers.