Project Promissa: tokenisation of promissory notes

Project Promissa explores how to make the funding processes of multilateral development banks (MDBs) fit for the 21st century, a goal of the G20. Today, MDBs fund their activities in various ways, including through member subscriptions and contributions, which are usually paid in cash or paper-based promissory notes.

Project Promissa reimagines the management of promissory notes by digitising these financial commitments and putting them on a distributed ledger in a process known as tokenisation. The project built a proof-of-concept (PoC) platform for tokenised promissory notes and tested the following key features with several central banks, ministries of finance and MDBs.

• Single source of truth – ensures a real-time availability of the true state of promissory notes (golden record), eliminating the need for messages and reconciliation between all involved parties
• Multiparty signatures – automate manual approval processes and speed up the handling of lifecycle events – such as issuance, encashment, and archiving of promissory notes – from weeks to seconds
• Confidentiality – ensures that records of the promissory notes are shared exclusively with the involved parties
• Sovereignty – preserves each party's ownership, control, and decision-making authority over its promissory notes

The results demonstrate that the PoC effectively addresses key pain points in the current lifecycle of promissory notes. It is also technically feasible, with no major issues identified in the tokenisation of promissory notes, subject to further study of the legal aspects identified in the preliminary review.