The Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) is working on a possible future Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and is looking to have its Real Digital ready for 2024. The BCB is working with the National Federation of Association of Banco Centra Servers to evaluate the benefits of a possible CBDC and the underlying technology options. This is being done as a programme called ‘LIFT Challenge Real Digital’. The LIFT challenge expects the rationale for a CBDC to develop during the project and so the infrastructure being evaluated will need to evolve to deliver the new benefits.
47 projects were submitted for inclusion in the LIFT challenge and only nine of these were selected for the implementation phase that lasts until July 2022. G+D’s Filia® proposal is one of those nine based on its dual offline payment capability which allows payments to take place when the payer and the payee are both offline without access to the internet or a power supply.
One of the goals of CBDC projects for many central banks is to increase financial inclusion, particularly for people without access to bank accounts, payment service providers or the internet. For this group, an offline capability is important.
G+D’s Filia solution has been designed to be token-based which helps it secure consecutive offline payments. The solution allows a protocol to use a secure hardware element, such as the chip found in a payment card, as the basis for an offline solution. The hardware device can be a smart card, a wearable device or a key fob, so neither the payer nor the recipient need a bank account. Mutually authorised ‘wallets’ or hardware devices can process payment transactions. It has been designed so that if the connection is interrupted during a transaction, money is not lost or transferred twice. The hardware devices are not expensive and do not require network availability, making them accessible to all in society.
G+D has designed its solution to be an open platform available to third-party private sector players to work with. It wants software developers to integrate innovative ideas using Filia and CBDCs into applications such as mobile banking apps for commercial banks
