Saudi Arabia Exits China-Backed mBridge Digital Currency Project

Saudi Arabia’s central bank has withdrawn from mBridge, the China-backed platform for settling cross-border payments in central bank digital currencies, the Financial Times reported Sunday, with the bank confirming the exit in a statement to the newspaper.

“As planned, SAMA successfully completed its mBridge [proof of concept] on 13 May 2025. Following the completion of the PoC, SAMA is no longer a participating member of mBridge”, the Saudi Central Bank stated. SAMA made no public announcement at the time it left, and the withdrawal surfaced only with the newspaper’s report 16 months later.

mBridge runs on a shared distributed ledger that lets participating central banks issue and transact in their own digital currencies for cross-border payments and foreign exchange, settling directly between jurisdictions. 

The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub began building the platform in 2021 with the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

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From MVP Milestone to Quiet Exit

SAMA, an observer on the project since 2023, according to the newspaper, came aboard in June 2024, when the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced mBridge had reached its minimum-viable-product stage and welcomed the Saudi bank as “the next full participant of the mBridge MVP platform”. 

The four founding central banking institutions each deployed validating nodes in their own jurisdictions at that stage, per the HKMA. The BIS handed mBridge to its member central banks in October 2024, saying the project had matured past the MVP threshold and that its departure was not politically motivated.

A $55 Billion Platform Under US Scrutiny

Transactions on mBridge had passed US$55.5 billion (AU$77.7 billion) across more than 4,000 cross-border payments by January, a roughly 2,500-fold increase on its 2022 pilots, according to Atlantic Council data, with China’s e-CNY accounting for about 95% of settlement volume. 

A 2024 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned the platform could give countries a settlement channel outside US sanctions’ reach, and Anthony Scaramucci and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong have warned that banning yield on US stablecoins hands China’s interest-paying digital yuan a strategic edge.

A person familiar with the matter told the FT it would be “inaccurate to draw any wider inference” from the Saudi withdrawal, given the limited scope of Riyadh’s participation. A second person told the newspaper Saudi Arabia continues to engage with the project discreetly.

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