As yet unsubstantiated rumours report that China is linking its digital renminbi cross- border payment system to the 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and six Middle East jurisdictions.

The Bank of England (BOE) is in the design phase of work on a digital pound (DP). As part of this phase, it is conducting experiments and proofs of concept in collaboration with private- sector innovators and a range of stakeholders.

Currency Research (CR) is hosting the 2025 Digital Currency Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, 28-29 May 2025. Nearly 200 delegates from central banks, financial institutions, fintechs, and technology providers from across the globe will come together to discuss the rapidly evolving digital currency landscape. Now in its 4th edition, the Digital Currency Conference was previously held in Mexico City (2022), Washington, DC (2023), and London (2024).

Mark Carney is Canada’s new prime minister, chosen by the Liberal Party after the resignation of Justin Trudeau.

An interesting Finextra article examines whether CBDCs are being planned without public support, the ‘solution in search of a problem’ conundrum. There are though, two distinct issues: the policy rationale (the fundamental problems a CBDC aims to address) and the use cases (why individuals might actually adopt it).

Account-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is not a radical departure from existing forms of money. While there is a need to amend and develop existing public law in the form of central bank and monetary law for CBDC, tokenbased CBDC represent a new form of money. The IMF has already written about account-based CBDC. It has now issued a paper on the private law framework needed for a retail token-based CBDC.

A recent survey has shown that the Israeli public is open to using a Digital Shekel. While 51% of respondents had either a high or intermediate interest in the digital currency, privacy did not rank as particularly important, and interest in the CBDC increased with age.

A new paper by the European Money & Finance Forum (SUERF) examines the importance of words. It examines the words and language used to in current economic and policy discussions of these developments in digital money and payments because their use is causing confusion.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) published its phase 1 evaluation report of its CBDC project in December 2023 having completed proof of concept studies and a pilot phase run as an R&D project. In the pilot, first payment transactions on the Digital Turkish Lira System were executed successfully. This report shared design choices and approaches adopted in this stage of the project.

OMFIF, in partnership with Giesecke+Devrient, is publishing a report in February exploring the factors contributing to the hesitation about launching a CBDC and what concerns central banks struggle with. In the report’s survey of central banks, 81% of respondents have issued or expect to issue a CBDC at some point, with 47% expecting to issue one within five years.