Building Bridges or Competing in a Payments Arms Race? The Geopolitics of the mBridge Project

This article examines the mBridge project, a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform that allows cross-border payments to be settled in local currencies, a feature that could, over time, reduce US dollar dominance. It situates mBridge in the broader landscape of CBDC experiments, emphasizing the contrasting priorities of countries in the Global North and South. Drawing on a detailed case study, the paper examines how mBridge functions, the challenges likely to arise in its large-scale deployment, and the implications it raises for the future of the international monetary and financial system (IMFS). By linking technical debates on cross-border payment infrastructures with geopolitical concerns about monetary dependence, the article aims to shed light on the disruptive potential of CBDCs and their limits as instruments of systemic change.