Project FuSSE aims to modernise financial market infrastructures
17 October 2023
Project FuSSE (Fully Scalable Settlement Engine, pronounced as fyooz) is a BIS Innovation Hub project that aims to modernize financial market infrastructures for the demands of the digital age. In the face of a rapidly digitizing economy, the traditional systems face myriad challenges. FuSSE offers an open-source solution designed to meet these evolving demands head-on.
Digitalization and the rapid advance of technology have dramatically reshaped the modern financial landscape. An increasingly digital economy has brought more people into the system, while creating an escalating demand for faster settlements, and more transactions.
This rapid transformation faces several challenges. The cost of updating financial market infrastructures is rising, components and systems are evolving at a breakneck pace, and integrating these innovative solutions to ensure straight-through financial services is becoming complex. Moreover, there's a palpable need for these infrastructures to be flexible, allowing them to harness the economies of scale and scope, and to collaborate on an international scale. Most systems around the globe lack the agility and adaptability to thrive in this rapidly changing environment.
Project Vision
Project FuSSE aims to mitigate the transition costs and guide the evolution of the next generation of financial infrastructures. The goal is to produce an open source building block that is flexible enough to be easily integrated in a wide variety of use cases. The goal is to achieve:
Versatility: Project FuSSE isn't just a one-size-fits-all solution. Its design allows for integration into various usage scenarios, from payment systems to securities settlements.
Scalability: Whether it's the more transactions, an increasing number of participants, or a diverse range of asset types, FuSSE is designed to be a system that can grow.
Efficiency: One of FuSSE's key design goals is to be adaptable to any systems, making it an accessible choice for central banks, irrespective of their existing infrastructure.
Security: Due to the sensitive nature of settlements, the system needs to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of services. FuSSE's architecture addresses these concerns, while at the same time ensuring future proofing by adopting a crypto agile approach.
Project FuSSE marks the first collaboration between the BIS and the Inter-American Development Bank, following an agreement signed by the two institutions in mid-September 2023. The project will benefit from the expertise of each institution as well as from central banks in Latin America and the Caribbean that will be invited to join at a later stage. The BIS's experience in technical experimentation and its global scope is complemented by the IDB's knowledge of the regional systems and their interactions, as well as its tools for reaching out to the region's relevant players.