Tanja Heßdörfer was interviewed at the CBDC conference in August for this article. Tanja is Head of Sales and Business Development, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)s, at Giesecke+Devrient (G+D).

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Financial Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) have issued a white paper on CBDCs.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub have been working on Project Aurum.

The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) conference took place at the very end of August in Frankfurt, the first CBDC conference in person, reflecting just how new CBDCs are.

Working paper 2713 from the ECB suggests policy interest in retail CBDCs has been driven by the decline in cash use and the rapid increase in digital payment types and use, challenging the status quo.

Taiwan has said that it has completed trials of its prototype retail CBDC in technical simulations. This was concluded three months early. Electronic payments have risen from 40% in 2017 to 60% in the first quarter of 2022.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Hong Kong Innovation Hub will start Project Selah in the third quarter of 2022. The project sees the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Israel working together, with the BIS, to test a two-tier system.

The CBDC conference has now posted its 2022 agenda online. More information about the conference can be found at www.cbdc-conference.com.

At a BIS event, the Central Bank of Chile announced that it is delaying its planned digital roll out to undertake further work on the benefits and risks.

The Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act (ECASH) has been introduced in the US Congress by Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat and chair of the House Task Force on Financial Technology. The bill directs the US Treasury Department to conduct a pilot program for a version of digital dollars that work just like cash in that they would be stored on hardware, not in bank accounts.