The Swiss National Bank is to issue a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) on Switzerland's SIX digital exchange as part of a pilot, the central bank's chairman said at a conference in Zurich on Monday.

"This is not just an experiment, it will be real money equivalent to bank reserves and the objective is to test real transactions with market participants," Chairman Thomas Jordan said at the Point Zero Forum.

Jordan said at the moment the pilot project was intended to be for a limited time.

(Reporting by Noele Illien; Editing by Alison Williams)