The state of Central Bank Digital Currency

The state of Central Bank Digital Currency

Innovations in digital currencies could redefine the concept of money and transform payments and banking systems.




    Central banking institutions have emerged as key players in the world of banking and money. They play a pivotal role in shaping economic and monetary policies, maintaining financial system stability, and overseeing currency issuance. A manifestation of the evolving interplay between central banks, money, and the forces that shape financial systems is the advent of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Many drivers have led central banks to explore CBDC: declining cash payments, the rise of digital payments and alternative currencies, and disruptive forces in the form of fin-tech innovations that continually reshape the payment landscape.

    Central banks are receptive towards recent technological advances and well-suited to the digital currency experiment, leveraging their inherent role of upholding the well-being of the monetary framework to innovate and facilitate a trustworthy and efficient monetary system.

    In 2023, 130 countries, representing 98% of global GDP, are known to be exploring a CBDC solution. Sixty-four of them are in an advanced phase of exploration (development, pilot, or launch), focused on lower costs for consumers and merchants, offline payments, robust security, and a higher level of privacy and transparency. Over 70% of the countries are evaluating digital ledger technology (DLT)-based solutions.  

    While still at a very nascent stage in terms of overall adoption for CBDC, the future of currency promises to be increasingly digital, supported by various innovations and maturation. CBDC has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift, particularly in the financial industry, redefining the way in which money, as we know it, exchanges hands.

    Read our perspective paper to learn more about CBDCs – the rationale for their existence, the factors driving their implementation, potential ramifications for the financial landscape, and challenges associated with their adoption.

    Download Perspective Paper




      Contact

      Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

      Get in touch
      Navigating distributed ledger technologies

      Navigating distributed ledger technologies

      Distributed ledger technology (DLT) strengthens data security, promotes transparency in transactions and can potentially revolutionize industries.




        Today’s enterprises rely heavily on information systems to enable their business processes, which are usually managed and controlled by the respective enterprises. However, there are a lot more multilateral transactions in the modern business value cycle. These span cross-enterprise and require faster, reliable access to the latest, comprehensive information about the transactions to make them more effective and, eventually, lead to better collaboration among enterprises.

        The reality, however, is that with decentralized information systems and each participant managing their version of truth, enterprises end up having an opaque information architecture resulting in information discrepancies, countless reconciliations, unproductive person-hours spent resolving these, increased operational risk, weakened trust, and increased cost.

        Decentralization by way of DLT is a step towards addressing these issues, enabling companies to jointly manage, operate and use a platform to maintain a single version of truth across participants and strong cryptography to create trust and immutability, which helps reduce the issues mentioned above. The objective is to deliver tamper-proof data and transparency to all network participants in a consensually-agreed manner.

        Distributed ledger technologies have evolved and matured over the last few years. While it came about with cryptocurrencies, the application of this technology in alternative use cases can benefit enterprises, and adoption of DLT is on the rise across industries.

        This perspective paper addresses the evolution and application of DLT in enterprises, and how it can be further embraced to realize potential across multilateral solutions. To learn more about the pillars and eminent platforms of DLT, key challenges and industry use cases, download the perspective paper. 

        Download Perspective Paper




          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch

          Release automation reduces testing time by 80%

          PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

          Release automation reduces testing time by 80%

          DevOps implementation and release automation improved testing time, product quality, and global reach for a leading multi-level marketing company.

          Client
          A leading multi-level marketing company
          Goal
          Shorten the release cycle and improve product quality
          Tools and Technologies
          Amazon CloudWatch, Elasticsearch, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Amazon ECR, Docker, and Kubernetes
          Business Challenge

          The client's Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications were built using substandard code branching methods, causing product quality issues. The absence of a release process and a manual integration and deployment process were elongating release cycles. Manual configuration and setup of these applications were also leading to extended downtime. Missing functional, smoke, and regression test cases were adding to the unstable development environment. The database migration process was manual, resulting in delays, data quality issues, and higher costs.

          Solution
          • Code branching and integration strategy for defects / hotfixes in major and minor releases​
          • Single-click application deployment, including environment creation, approval and deployment activities​
          • Global DevOps platform implementation with a launch pad for applications to onboard other countries​
          • Automated configuration and deployment of COTS applications and databases​
          • Automation suite with 90% coverage of smoke and regression test cases​
          • Static and dynamic analysis implementations to ensure code quality and address configuration issues​
          Outcomes

          Automation of release cycles delivered the following benefits to the client:

          • Release cycle shortened from once a month to once per week
          • MTTR reduced by 6 hrs
          • Downtime decreased to <4 hours from 8 hours
          • Product quality and defect leakage improved by 75%
          • Testing time reduced by 80%
          • Reach expanded to global geographies
          • Availability, scalability, and fault tolerance enhanced for microservices-based applications
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          DevOps solution improves scalability by 5x

          LIFE SCIENCES

          Automated app & infra deployment improves scalability

          Automated app and infra deployment with DevOps implementation help a leading medical company launch applications in new geographies, improve time-to-market, and reduce the total cost of ownership.

          Client
          North America-based fertility and genomics company
          Goal
          Expand business reach, reduce time-to-market, and support critical compliance
          Tools and Technologies
          .NET 5, Vue.js, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Transfer Family, Amazon RDS, Amazon EKS, Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFront, Terraform, GitLab
          Business Challenge

          The client wanted to expand its reach to Canada, Europe, and APAC regions to meet the requirements for a 10x increase in their user base. Legacy application infrastructure and code built on the old tech stack, with high technical debt, were slowing down the rollout of new features, making the client less competitive. The infra-deployment process was only partially automated, stretching the time-to-market to three months. The total cost of ownership was relatively high. HIPPA and PII compliance were also not supported.

          Solution

          Iris modernized the application into microservices, built the infrastructure using Terraform and automated its provisioning and configuration.

          • Application developed using .NET 5 and Vue.js
          • Architecture transformed into cloud-native
          • AWS Managed Services, including Secrets Manager, AWS Transfer Family, RDS, EKS, Route 53, CloudFront, and S3, configured using Terraform
          • EKS Cluster and associated components provisioned via Terraform
          • App pushed to container registry using GitLab pipeline
          • Secrets (API keys, database connection strings, etc.) and app images moved to EKS Cluster using S3 Bucket Helm
          • Static code analysis, coverage and vulnerability scans integrated to ensure code quality and reduce configuration issues
          Outcomes

          Our DevOps solution enabled the client to achieve significant benefits, including:

          • Application launch in Canada and Europe; Asia Pacific release in the pipeline
          • HIPPA and PII compliance
          • 5x scalability improvement from weekly average usage
          • Time-to-market reduced from three months to 3 weeks
          • Total cost of ownership lowered by 50%
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          Order management platform transformation

          PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

          New platform transforms transactions processes

          Platform transformation and multi-cloud integration improve multinational publishing company's order management, time-to-market and performance.

          Client
          Multinational publishing, media, and educational company
          Goal
          Improve order management and transaction processing capabilities
          Technology Tools
          AWS EKS, Kong, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), Salesforce CRM, Jenkins, Sumo Logic, Datadog
          Business Challenge

          The client's order management platform was complex and had scalability issues, causing poor customer experience and loss of revenue. The platform was hosted on Oracle cloud, with data stored in different repositories. Services were also hosted in the Oracle cloud, which used the BICC extract to fetch information about order details from Oracle databases. The low performance of customer-facing applications was causing latency and very high transaction processing time.

          Solution

          Team Iris transformed Oracle-based SOA services into six microservices and migrated them to AWS EKS for autoscaling with self-healing and monitoring capabilities.

          We developed services for publishing data to Salesforce CRM for quick order processing and conversions. The BICC system for diversified information and order history was enabled with real-time integration between Oracle Fusion and materialized views for data consumption.

          Post migration, these services were registered in Kong for discovery, and a CI/CD pipeline was created for deployment using Jenkins. Sumo Logic was used for monitoring the logs, and Datadog was used to observe latency, anomalies and other metrics.

          Outcomes

          The order management platform transformation delivered the following benefits to the client:

          • System performance improved by 70%
          • Transaction processing capability increased by 4x
          • Order processing capabilities were enhanced by 200%
          • Total cost of ownership (TCO) was reduced by 30%
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          Next-gen platform reliability engineering for Blockchain-DLT

          Banking & Financial Services

          Next-gen platform reliability engineering for Blockchain-DLT

          Reliability engineering helps a digital financial services client smoothly migrate its legacy Blockchain-DLT (Digital Ledger Technology) platform and gain advanced automation coverage and patch delivery efficiencies.

          Client
          A leading digital financial services company
          Goal
          Blockchain- DLT platform assurance with improved automation coverage
          Tools and Technologies
          Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), Docker, Terraform, Helm Charts, Microservices, Kotlin, Xray
          Business Challenge

          The client's legacy DLT platform did not support cloud capabilities with the Blockchain-DLT tech stack. The non-GUI (Graphic User Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface)-based platform lacked the microservices architecture and cluster resilience.

          The REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs-based platform did not support platform assurance validation at the backend. Automation coverage for legacy and newer versions of the products was very low. Support for delivery patches was insufficient, impacting the delivery of multiple versions of R3 products each month.

          Solution

          Iris developed multiple CorDapps to support automation around DLT-platform functionalities and enhanced the CLI-based & cluster utilities in the existing R3 automation framework.

          The team implemented the test case management tool Xray to improve test automation coverage for legacy and newer versions of the Corda platform, enabling smooth and frequent patch deliveries every month.

          The quality engineering process was streamlined for the team's Kanban board by modifying the workflows. Iris also introduced the ability to execute a testing suite that could run on a daily or as-needed basis for AKS, EKS, and Local MAC/ Windows/ Linux cluster environments.

          Outcomes

          The Blockchain-DLT reliability assurance solution enabled the client to attain:

          • Improved automation coverage of the DLT platform with 900 test cases with a pass rate of 96% in daily runs
          • Compatibility across AWS-EKS, Azure-AKS, Mac, Windows, Linux, and local clusters
          • Increased efficiency in deliverables with an annual $35K savings in the test case management area
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          Tech stack automation expedites development by 3x

          Manufacturing

          Tech stack automation expedites script development by 3x

          Manual processes across the multi-technology stack were severely affecting the script development cycles in terms of time, effort and cost. Iris application agnostic Test Automation framework and DevOps integration helped the client reduce the script development time and cost significantly.

          Client
          A leading building supplies manufacturing company
          Goal
          To support 30+ applications stack for UI, E2E, APIs, performance, mobile automation along with DevOps pipeline integration
          Tools and Technologies
          .NET Core, PeopleSoft, Salesforce, WMS, JavaScript, Angular, Foxpro, C#, Selenium, SpecFlow, RestSharp, Nunit, Mobile Center/Emulators, Allure, Jira, Azure Pipeline, GitHub
          Business Challenge

          The client had technology stacks comprising of diverse technologies that were difficult to manage. Substantial manual effort and time were spent on integrating the checkpoints, elongating the development process. Validating end-to-end business flows across different applications was the prime challenge. Reporting processes were also scattered across the entire application stack, making it vulnerable.

          Solution

          Iris developed a robust application agnostic Test Automation framework to support the client’s multiple-technology stacks. Following the Behavior-driven Development (BDD) approach to align the acceptance criteria with the stakeholders, we built business and application layers of the common utilities in the core framework.

          Our experts identified E2E business flows to validate the downstream impact of the change and automated the entire stack through the shift-left approach. Azure DevOps integration enabled a common dashboard for reporting. The client attained complete version control to track production health and enforce strong validations.

          Outcomes

          Iris Automation solution enabled the client to surpass several business goals. The key outcomes of the delivered solution included:

          • ~65% Increase in automation coverage
          • 100+ Pipelines for in-scope applications across multiple environments
          • 3700+ Test Automation scripts execution per sprint cycle achieved across applications
          • 3X Faster script development of behavior-driven test cases 
          • Multi-day manual test effort reduced to a few hours of automated regression 
          • 70% Reduction in effort
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          Digital ledger secures trading integrity

          Banking & Financial Services

          Digital ledger secures trading integrity

          Automated, expandable distributed ledger system resolves trade reconciliation and compliance issues and lowers costs for global bank.

          Client
          Global bank's trading operations
          Goal
          Resolve trading transaction breaks and related regulatory issues through expandable intra-company digital ledger system
          Tools and Technologies
          Hyperledger Fabric 1.4/2.2, Java 8, Go Language 1.8, Kafka, Node JS, Microservices, OpenShift, Dockers, Kubernetes
          Business Challenge

          A highly-manual, paper-dependent, trading and reconciliation process was causing the accumulation of a large number of daily transaction liquidity breaks, which had been cited by federal regulators and risked a billion dollar cost impact.

          The lack of a robust trade audit and reconciliation process to reduce liquidity breaks and operating costs led the bank to seek an immutable system that could record and unify financial practices and be expanded to other transaction areas.

          Solution

          Iris solution comprised a production-ready, configurable platform using microservices and blockchain-based digital ledger architecture. It employed Smart Contracts coded with requisite business rules to facilitate front office trade booking and trade reconciliation processes. 

          RPA was utilized to automate data mapping and testing of transactions. Preventive controls were enabled by recording intra-company transactions at their initiation using uniform booking practices, and consequently guaranteeing the term of the trade. A multi-layered infrastructure was created to support real-time, batch streaming of differing file formats. The UX was enriched through Interactive UI and automated workflows.

          Outcomes

          Iris successfully introduced a global intra-company distributed ledger and trade reconciliation system that did not exist before. With self-executing contracts matching both sides of transactions prior to feeding downstream systems, the platform ensures complete integrity at the source and reduces time and cost for all transactions. The solution also achieved:

          • 30% fewer liquidity breaks
          • 70% improvement in operational efficiency due to the use of RPA
          • 60% reduction in business-rules configuration time, due to the smart contracts
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          Software transformation gets compliance for bank

          Risk & Compliance

          Software transformation gets FDIC compliance for bank

          World’s renowned investment bank gets timely compliant with new QFC (Qualified Financial Contracts) and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) regulations through holistic system transformation and extensive QA & testing.

          Client
          A global investment bank
          Goal
          To have a unified functional validation system for FDIC compliance
          Tools and Technologies
          SQL Server, Sybase, Data Lake, UTM, .NET, DTA, Control-M, ALM, JIRA, Git, RLM, Nexus, Unix, WinSCP, Putty, Python, PyCharm, Confluence, Rabacus, SNS, and Datawatch
          Business Challenge

          The client mandated to comply with new QFC (Qualified Financial Contracts) regulations. The client also needed to perform in-depth functional validation across a revamped data platform to ensure it could timely process, review and submit to the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) required daily reports on the open QFC positions of all its counterparties.

          The project entailed immediate availability and processing of accurate QFC information at the close of each business day to swiftly assess data and note exceptions and exclusions for early corrective action. It also aimed to help the client meet stringent deadlines with varied report formats. Any breach or delay in compliance could attach hefty fines and reputational damage to the bank.

          Solution

          Iris revamped the entire system and performed end-to-end quality assurance and testing across the new regulatory reporting platform. This meant validating the transformed multi-layer database, user interface (UI), business process rules, and downstream applications.

          We identified and solved workflow design gaps affecting data reporting on all open positions, agreements, margins, collaterals, and corporate entities, thus enhancing the capability for addressing irregularities. Our experts established an integrated and collaborative system, commanding transaction and reference data within a single platform by incorporating 166 distinct controls pertaining to data completeness, accuracy, consistency, and timeliness within a strategic framework.

          Outcomes

          Our quality assurance and testing solution delivered the following impacts:

          • Faster and more efficient internal analysis with highly accurate QFC open positions
          • 100% compliance with timing and format of required daily QFC report submissions to the FDIC
          • Significant decrease in exceptions before the platform went go-live and critical defect delivery drastically reduced post-implementation
          • An intuitive UI dashboard reflecting the real-time status of critical underlying data volumes, leakages, job run, and other stats
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.

          IT modernization boosts Insurance customer base

          Insurance

          IT modernization boosts Insurance customer base

          Existing applications and business systems of a Fortune 500 Insurance Carrier were inadequate to meet customer expectations. Iris business systems transformation solution enabled the client to deliver a consistent customer experience, improving acquisition and retention significantly.

          Client
          A leading American Fortune 500 Insurance Services Provider, offering insurance, investment management and financial products & services across the Americas and 40 other countries
          Goal
          To advance business agility and customer experience through modernized business systems
          Tools and Technologies
          C#/.NET, JAVA, DevOps, Python, NodeJS, App Services, Managed Application Support
          Business Challenge

          The client’s existing business applications, systems, and support services were in stasis and not delivering the much-needed value to the insurer and end customers.

          Due to the lack of enterprise application portfolio strategy, business functions were onboarding applications in a silo. The net impact was that the insurer’s revenue and market share decreased. 

          Longer turnaround times and outdated UI were discouraging customers. On the other hand, prospective customers were also opting for modernized options available in the market.

          Solution

          Iris delivered app development and managed services across Annuities, Life Insurance, Group Insurance, Retirements and the Global Enterprise Service groups that decide the platform for all business units. Our services spanned around Enterprise Collaboration portal, Financial Wellness platform, Mutual Fund platform modernization, Oracle EBS development and support, and Retirement Annuities platform management.

          We also executed a scaled Agile program and ran multiple Scrums within the enterprise development and support landscape. Iris tech experts established DevOps and scaled Agile Framework within the client organization and enabled a team of over 150 professionals globally to support business operations 24X7.

          Outcomes

          Iris has been working around the application portfolio for over three years. We have helped the client deliver an exceptional experience to employees and end customers through active service support. Key outcomes of the delivered solution included:

          • Infrastructure availability increased to 99%
          • Optimized maintainability reduced the KYC process time by 75% 
          • Customer response time cut down by around 40% 
          • Promoter score incremented from 5 to 9 out of 10 
          • Customer retention improved by nearly 80% 
          • Customer acquisition increased by 65%
          Contact

          Our experts can help you find the right solutions to meet your needs.

          Get in touch
          Explore the world with Iris. Follow us on social media today.