Building central bank digital currency

Despite the crypto winter, central bank digital currency (CBDC) development and experimentation continues to gain momentum. The design and implementation of CBDC around the globe has implications for retail, commercial, and central banks in terms of strategy, business models, organizational structure, and technology.

Although CBDC currently generates broad public – and private – sector attention, attempts to digitize fiat money to transfer value or to pay for goods and services are not new.

What distinguishes CBDC today is momentum:

• Digital currency ecosystems have benefited from the mass adoption of digitalization during and after the COVID-19 pandemic; and
• As its infrastructure and technology mature, governments, individuals, and private companies are working together to innovate and develop CBDC policies.

It may be that we are closer than ever to a world in which CBDC is built, fully launched, and gains real traction in the marketplace – and as a result helps to reshape the global banking industry and how it operates. But CBDC critics and naysayers also abound: even in the near term, future developments in central bank digital currency are difficult to predict.

The continuing CBDC journey bears attention and is one worth following. To explore thought provoking CBDC developments: