RECRYPBuilding the rails beneath sovereign digital money.
Recryp is the interoperability and settlement layer connecting central bank digital currencies, regulated stablecoins, and cross-border trade — the fintech infrastructure above the world's sovereign rails.
Money is going sovereign and digital. The rails connecting it aren't built yet.
Correspondent banking routes a cross-border payment through three, four, sometimes five intermediary banks — each one a delay, a fee, and a compliance checkpoint. Central banks are now issuing their own digital currencies to fix this domestically.
But a rupee-denominated CBDC still can't talk to a dirham-denominated one. Every sovereign is building its own rail in isolation. Nobody is building the layer that connects them — the equivalent of what SWIFT did for correspondent banking, rebuilt for programmable, sovereign-issued money.
The messaging side of that old system has already moved on without waiting for the settlement side to catch up. SWIFT finished migrating core cross-border payment traffic from legacy MT messages to ISO 20022's MX format in November 2025 — the correspondent network now carries richer, structured data on every wire. What it still can't do is settle a payment natively in a central bank's own digital currency. The pipe got smarter. The rail underneath it didn't change.
That's the layer Recryp is building: infrastructure that lets a central bank, a commercial bank, or a business moving goods across a border settle in sovereign digital currency directly — compliant, atomic, and without the correspondent chain.
countries, representing an estimated 98% of global GDP, are exploring or piloting a CBDC — 70+ already in development or live pilot.
typical time for a cross-border payment to clear a correspondent-banking chain, even with ISO 20022 messaging on both ends.
moves across borders every year — with no common settlement layer connecting sovereign digital currencies to each other.
Sources: Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker, McKinsey Global Payments Map, SWIFT ISO 20022 migration reporting — figures are directional, not audited, and change as pilots progress.
The bridges being built today are bilateral. That's the gap.
This isn't a hypothetical problem. Every major sovereign digital currency initiative running right now proves the same point: central banks can connect two rails to each other, but nobody has built the neutral layer that connects all of them.
mBridge
BIS coordinated Project mBridge from 2021 until it reached minimum viable product stage in June 2024 — then withdrew, citing an inability to support the project's expanding BRICS+-adjacent membership and the sanctions exposure that came with it. The remaining participants (the People's Bank of China, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Bank of Thailand, Central Bank of the UAE, and Saudi Arabia's SAMA) kept running it anyway: roughly $55.5B processed across 4,000+ transactions, about 95% of it settled in e-CNY.
The lesson: a bridge built and governed by its own participants works — until neutrality becomes the question. mBridge is proof the technology isn't the hard part.
Project Nexus
BIS's other interoperability bet connects domestic instant-payment systems rather than CBDCs directly — India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand are founding members, incorporated as Nexus Global Payments in Singapore in 2025, with a potential reach of 1.7 billion people once live.
The lesson: even the retail-payments layer needed a dedicated multilateral entity to connect five countries. Sovereign digital currency settlement is a harder problem than IPS-to-IPS linking, and no equivalent neutral entity exists for it yet.
UAE Digital Dirham
The Central Bank of the UAE launched the Digital Dirham for retail use in March 2026 — zero-fee instant P2P transfers, merchant acceptance, and cross-border transfer capability already live with Saudi Arabia, India, and China, with full rollout targeted for late 2026.
The lesson: Recryp's Global HQ market already has a live retail CBDC actively adding cross-border corridors — including to India, where Recryp's HQ sits.
India e₹ (Digital Rupee)
RBI's retail e₹ pilot has run since December 2022 and now spans 19 banks and several fintechs, fully interoperable with UPI QR codes. Gujarat began a CBDC-based Public Distribution System pilot in February 2026 using programmable e₹ redeemable only at Fair Price Shops. RBI has signed a digital-assets pact with Singapore's MAS and is in discussions with Singapore and the UAE on CBDC pilots.
The lesson: India is deliberately sequencing domestic scale before cross-border expansion — exactly the moment a neutral interoperability layer needs to exist for the next corridor to open on.
Digital Euro
The Eurosystem closed its preparation phase in October 2025 and moved to pilot preparation, selecting payment-service-provider partners through mid-2026 ahead of a 12-month pilot operational phase planned for the second half of 2027. A first issuance is targeted for 2029, pending EU legislation.
The lesson: the largest reserve-currency bloc after the dollar is years away from issuance — the interoperability layer being built now needs to be ready for corridors that don't exist yet.
ISO 20022 / SWIFT
SWIFT's coexistence period for core cross-border FI messages (MT102, MT103, MT201, MT203) ended 22 November 2025 — the correspondent network is now natively ISO 20022. Further deadlines run through November 2026 for structured addresses and MT101 migration.
The lesson: the message format problem is solved. The settlement problem — actually moving sovereign digital currency value, not just describing the payment — is the one still open, and it's the one Recryp is built for.
Sources: Bank for International Settlements, Reserve Bank of India, Central Bank of the UAE, European Central Bank, SWIFT — see the Insights hub for deeper explainers on each of these. Recryp is not affiliated with and does not participate in mBridge, Nexus, or any CBDC issued by the institutions named above; they are cited as public market context.
One stack. Every sovereign rail.
Recryp sits above the world's central bank digital currencies and regulated stablecoins as a single interoperability layer — four disciplines, one settlement fabric, in the order value actually moves through them.
Connectivity
Bridges & MessagingDirect API and messaging bridges into central bank digital currency networks and regulated stablecoin issuers — ISO 20022–native, built for the rails sovereigns are already deploying rather than a parallel network they'd have to adopt.
Compliance
Travel Rule & PolicyTravel Rule data, sanctions screening, and jurisdiction-aware policy enforcement run inside every transaction — not bolted on after settlement, but part of how the transaction is constructed in the first place.
Settlement
Atomic & Real-TimeAtomic, real-time settlement across sovereign currency pairs — no correspondent chain, no nostro/vostro float sitting idle overnight, no settlement risk between legs of the transaction.
Liquidity & FX
Price DiscoveryProgrammatic price discovery and FX matching between sovereign digital currencies, so value moves at the rate information travels — not at the rate a banking day opens and closes.
Institutions moving value across sovereign rails.
Recryp is infrastructure, not a consumer product — built for the institutions that issue, move, and depend on sovereign digital currency.
Central Banks & Sovereigns
Interoperability infrastructure for CBDC pilots and live issuance — connect to other sovereign rails without negotiating a bilateral bridge for every corridor.
Read more →Commercial Banks & PSPs
One integration point for CBDC-denominated settlement, instead of a new bilateral connection every time a corridor opens.
Read more →Cross-Border Trade & Corporates
Move trade finance and payables across currencies at settlement speed, with compliance built into the rail, not bolted onto the workflow.
Read more →Fintechs & Neobanks
Programmable access to sovereign digital currency rails through one API, so on/off-ramp and cross-border products build on infrastructure, not workarounds.
Read more →Institutional Investors & Treasuries
Direct settlement access to sovereign digital currency markets, without routing capital through a legacy correspondent chain.
Read more →Regulators & Standards Bodies
A neutral interoperability layer designed to be auditable and policy-configurable by jurisdiction, not a black box sitting between sovereign systems.
Read more →Early. Deliberate. Built in the open with the institutions who'll use it.
We're pre-seed and building in stealth. This is the honest state of the build — no shortcuts on the sequence.
Thesis & Research
Mapping CBDC pilots, regulatory frameworks, and priority cross-border corridors across sovereign issuers.
Protocol Design
Architecture for connectivity, compliance, and settlement across the first corridor pair.
Sandbox Partnerships
Working inside regulatory sandboxes with early central bank and institutional pilot partners.
First Corridor Live
Settlement live between two sovereign digital currency rails, end to end.
Building a sovereign rail? Or backing the layer above it?
We're talking with central banks, financial institutions, and early-stage investors who see where sovereign digital currency is headed. If that's you, reach out directly.