The National Bank of Cambodia has reportedly inked an agreement with distributed ledger tech startup Soramitsu that will find the central bank contributing to its development projects.

Announced today, the goal of the effort is to begin joint work on new payment infrastructure prototypes using DLT systems. But while a host of central banks are studying the technology globally, Soramitsu co-CEO Makoto Takemiya framed the news as unique in that he asserted the central bank has agreed to go beyond “just studying” applications.

Founded in 2016, Soramitsu is best known for its management of the Hyperledger Iroha software framework, to which he said National Bank of Cambodia will now be contributing.

Takemiya told CoinDesk:

“This is extremely exciting because their programmers intimately know what financial institutions need and can help make Hyperledger Iroha ready for systemically important payment systems.”

For the startup, the deal adds to past work that has included trials conducted with Japan-based property insurer Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings, while for National Bank Cambodia, it follows its scarce public statements to date about the technology.

As reported by the Phnom Penh Post in 2014, National Bank of Cambodia had previously said bitcoin does not fall under its definition of a currency.

Meanwhile, the trial comes amid an active time for central bank exploration of the technology, with Bank of England, De Nederlandsche Bank and the People’s Bank of China all announcing recent initiatives aimed at investigating its potential.

Cambodia image via Shutterstock