The Rwanda Bankers’ Association (RBA) has considered lessons to be learnt from the implementations of CBDC in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria.

The National Bank of Kazakhstan has taken to LinkedIn to report progress on the Digital Tenge and to state that it is open to collaboration on CBDCs, programmable payments and what it refers to as GovTech. The Digital Tenge is already live, and it is providing a working programmable finance system that’s already part of the country’s financial infrastructure.

Norges Bank has assessed whether introducing a CBDC is appropriate to ensure that paying with the Norwegian krone will remain secure, efficient and attractive.

At the recent Asia Cash Management Association meeting at the Asia Cash Cycle conference in Bali, Scott Forster of the CPT Group presented on the systemic resilience and fragility of the cash infrastructure. For cash to survive, the cash infrastructure must be sustainable and viable.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has formed a task force to explore adoption of stablecoins. It is doing this in the context of the eNaira, which is proving unpopular.

The leader of China’s Digital Currency Research Institute has obliquely hinted that the eCNY may evolve to involve fractional banking, becoming a tokenised deposit solution anchored by a wholesale CBDC.

Reuters reports that China’s State Council is considering allowing the use of yuan- backed stablecoins. Intended to boost adoption of the yuan globally, this would be a change in policy given that China banned cryptocurrency trading and mining in 2021 due to concerns about the stability of the financial system.

The Central Bank of Brazil wants to deliver a CBDC, the Drex, in 2026.

Central banks are exploring ways to make cross-border wholesale payments faster and cheaper using new technologies such as tokenisation. A recent Financial Times article lays out the options.

Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer says stablecoins offer promising attributes like high speed and low costs but lack essential attributes like a seamless user experience and wide distribution to consumers.