Saudi Arabia CBDC and cross-border corridor programmes
Official wholesale digital-money work remains pilot or platform evidence unless SAMA publishes a standing production route.
Wholesale digital-money map
CBDC and corridor architecture
Project Aber is the main public Saudi reference for wholesale central-bank digital-money experimentation. It was a SAMA and Central Bank of the UAE pilot for a dual-issued digital currency for domestic and cross-border settlement between commercial banks.
SAMA later announced participation in the mBridge platform phase for wholesale multi-central-bank CBDC settlement. Treat current mBridge governance, participant access, and production status as freshness-sensitive.
A 2025 SAMA Governor speech publicly described a tokenized-deposits proof-of-concept that tested account-based and token-based models of tokenized commercial bank money. That description is evidence of innovation work, not a public tokenized-deposit licence category.
No CBDC, mBridge, or tokenized-deposit pilot should be shown as authorizing private stablecoin issuance, native-crypto custody, or local VASP activity.
Programme matrix
| Programme | Status | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Project Aber | Official SAMA-CBUAE pilot evidence. | Technical and policy evidence; not a standing production rulebook. |
| Domestic CBDC-style settlement | Tested in Aber use cases. | Commercial-bank / central-bank context; no retail or private-token route. |
| Cross-border CBDC-style settlement | Aber and mBridge references show official corridor experimentation. | Production access and governance must be verified before current-state claims. |
| DvP with dematerialized assets | Aber report listed DvP / dematerialized-assets settlement as future work. | Relevant to tokenized-capital-markets planning but not a legal permission by itself. |
| Tokenized deposits | SAMA speech described proof-of-concept testing. | No standing public tokenized-deposit category. |