The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been researching CBDCs. Its latest work found legal, regulatory, technical and operation issues that suggest an early launch of a CBDC is unlikely.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) has published a paper questioning whether the design of the digital euro could already be undermining its chances of success.

Laos has trialled a digital currency, the Digital Lao Kip, working with Soramitsu, a Japanese fintech company.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has surveyed 86 central banks and found over half are conducting concrete experiments or piloting CBDCs.

China’s digital currency, the e-CNY, is the world’s largest, longest running and most ambitious Central Bank Digital Currency pilot. Its scale and ambition are huge, as shown by the Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) who, speaking at a Monetary Authority of Singapore conference, revealed that the e-CNY has had over $250 billion in transactions in its first 18 months since launch.

The media rejoices in either claiming the metaverse is dead in the water or that it is booming. Wherever it falls, payments are made in the metaverse, it is a global marketplace and there is the opportunity to do things differently.

The Bank for International Settlements has published ‘A Handbook for Offline Payments with Central Bank Digital Currencies’.

Bruegel, a Brussels based European think tank, has published a paper considering the value added by CBDC in the context of the euro area.

Account-to-account payments (A2A) have been talked about for some time. There is some evidence that they are beginning to fulfil their promise. The latest 2023 Worldpay Global Payments Report from FIS says there are now 64 real-time payment schemes in operation providing high-speed payment rails for A2A payments.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has issued a progress report on the digital euro. The ECB’s thinking is in development, with a final decision to be made at a future date. A notable element in the report is the work on how the digital euro may be made available and harmonised with existing payment systems.