BIS Steps Back From Digital Payment Project Touted by Putin (1)

The Bank for International Settlements is leaving a project for digital cross-border payments after Russia’s president Vladimir Putin identified the underlying technology as a tool to circumvent sanctions and potentially undermine the dollar.

The countries behind project mBridge — China, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates — will now keep pursuing it on their own. China supplied the platform’s key technological backbone.

“The partners can carry it on by themselves,” BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens said on Thursday at an event in Madrid. He said the decision wasn’t taken because of political considerations.

The mBridge project ...