On 20 September the FT said SAMA ended its public mBridge membership after a mid-May 2025 pilot, having joined in June 2024. The bank framed the China-led wholesale central-bank digital currency (CBDC) work as cross-border payment research rather than a live retail rail.
The FT's 20 September story said SAMA exited mBridge, a wholesale central-bank digital-currency network built by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Bank of Thailand and UAE central bank. The bank stated it became a full participant in June 2024, closed a mid-May 2025 mBridge pilot, then dropped public membership.[1]
SAMA described the mBridge trial as desk work on how banks might pay partners abroad, not as a retail payment product. The headline, the 20 September date and the June 2024 and May 2025 calendar lines are as the Financial Times recorded them.[1]
Sources quoted by the FT discouraged treating the exit as Washington pressure working in a straight line. That is a sourced caution about inference, not a confirmed account of why the membership ended, and it does not establish that the membership continues in private. The FT recorded the end of a public membership, not a confirmed full exit from the network.[1]
