The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has announced a collaboration with the Digital Financial Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) on a research project to explore potential use cases of CBDC in Australia.
The project will also explore the economic benefits the central bank digital currency could bring.
This project involves selected industry participants and will explore several use cases in a limited-scale pilot CBDC that is a real digital claim on the Reserve Bank.
The RBA stated it received a large number of use case submissions from a range of industry participants. To be considered for the project, a range of criteria was considered, including the potential to provide insights into the benefits of CBDC.
ANZ is the use case lead or co-lead on many of the use cases. These include offline payments, nature-based asset trading, superstream payments and CBDC distribution.
Others involved with the project are Commonwealth Bank, Oban, Australian Bond Exchange, Canvas Digital, Intuit, digi.cash, Fame Capital, Imperium Markets, Mastercard, Cuscal, Monoova, NotCentralised and Unizon.
As for the use cases, these are corporate bond settlement, tokenised FX settlement, GST automation, CBDC custodial models, livestock auction, high quality liquid assets securities trading, interoperable CBDC for trusted web3 commerce, funds custody, construction payments and tokenised bills.
Commenting on the latest development, RBA assistant governor Brad Jones said, “We are delighted with the enthusiastic engagement by industry in this important research project. It has also been encouraging that the use case providers that have been invited to participate in the pilot span a wide range of entities in the Australian financial system, from smaller FinTechs to large financial institutions.
“The pilot and broader research study that will be conducted in parallel will serve two ends – it will contribute to hands-on learning by industry, and it will add to policy makers’ understanding of how a CBDC could potentially benefit the Australian financial system and economy.”
Australia is just one of several countries currently exploring CBDC. Last month, the Bank of Japan launched a proof-of-concept pilot programme for a CBDC.
Similarly, the Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) concluded the first test transactions for its digital Turkish Lira CBDC network.
Keep up with all the latest RegTech news here.
Copyright © 2023 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
