NEW DELHI: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it has enhanced its award-winning Quartz solution to enable central and commercial banks to support the entire lifecycle of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) issuance, book-keeping and transactions.
The digital equivalent of government-issued bank notes, a CBDC can help a central bank move towards a globalized, secure, cost-effective, and traceable payments settlement system, while also promoting financial inclusion and helping counter threats that can arise from unregulated cryptocurrency markets. The use of Distributed Ledger Technology in a permissioned blockchain model makes CBDC deployment architecturally different from other crypto assets, while its real-time connectivity between market participants will ensure instant payments and reduced transaction costs.
TCS’ award-winning Quartz solution provides the capability to issue, trade and settle a variety of traditional as well as tokenized assets, and handle payment transactions. It bridges the conventional and digital world, helping organizations manage issuance and transactions of various kinds of digital assets, without the need for a central third party. With the enhanced solution, central banks will be able to manage the issuance and distribution of CBDCs while commercial banks can transact with other banks and payment services providers using CBDCs as well as offer their customers the ability to hold CBDC balances.
The Quartz solution’s configurable, hierarchical account structure is designed to bring in flexibility to support each country or region’s CBDC adoption model guided by the local monetary policy and financial inclusion strategies. This account structure allows CBDC balances to be held in consolidated as well as segregated form, along with near real-time synchronization with central bank systems.
The solution’s coexistence strategy will help banks and other organizations in rolling out CBDC based services with minimal impact. The Quartz Gateway, through its microservices architecture and availability of REST APIs, will help banks integrate the new solution with their existing applications. Banks can invoke these APIs for CBDC transactions related to payments, settlements, and cross-border transactions in the same manner as with fiat currencies.
Vivekanand Ramgopal, President, BFSI Products and Platforms, TCS, said, “Central banks around the world are experimenting with CBDCs in their efforts to transform payments and settlements and create an open and safe monetary system that encourages innovation. We have extended the capabilities of our Quartz solution to help our customers in central banking, financial services, payments, and other industries to adapt to this strategic transformation. Further, its co-existent microservices architecture enables financial institutions to introduce these next generation services even as they retain their existing systems.”
