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What is a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)? A CBDC is virtual money backed and issued by a central bank. As money and payments have become more digital, the world’s central banks have realized that they need to provide a public option—or let the future of money pass them by.
Hover over a country to see its status. Click on a country to learn more.
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Last updated: May 2024
Key findings
134 countries & currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC. In May 2020 that number was only 35. Currently, 68 countries are in the advanced phase of exploration—development, pilot, or launch.
19 of the Group of 20 (G20) countries are now in the advanced stages of CBDC development. Of those, eleven countries are already in the pilot stage. This includes Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, South Africa, Russia, and Turkey.
3 countries have fully launched a CBDC—the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria. The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union—consisting of 8 countries—halted availability of DCash due to technical issues and is developing a new pilot.
There is a new high of 36 ongoing CBDC pilots, including the digital euro. The European Central Bank (ECB) is now in the preparation phase, conducting practical tests with some transactions being settled in a controlled environment. The digital euro is in a 2-year preparation stage, ending in 2025.
Progress on retail CBDC has stalled in the US. There is a widening gap between the US and G7 banks, including the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. CBDC has become an issue in the ongoing US presidential campaign, with several candidates speaking out against its development.
In every country with an advanced retail CBDC project, CBDCs are intermediated, meaning they are distributed through banks, financial institutions, and payments service providers. In China, there is also an option for a direct CBDC—which can be accessed through a central bank application.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—the founding members of BRICS—are in the pilot phase of CBDC exploration. Several of the new members—Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE—are also exploring cross-border wholesale CBDCs. Since last year, BRICS has actively promoted developing an alternate payments system to the dollar.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting G7 sanctions response, wholesale CBDC developments have doubled. There are currently 13 cross-border wholesale CBDC projects, including mBridge, which connects China, Thailand, the UAE, and Hong Kong, and will enter a new phase, expanding to 11 more countries this year.
As the largest CBDC pilot in the world, China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) reaches 260 million wallets across 25 cities. Since 2022, it has been used in a range of settings from transit and healthcare to buying crude oil. In 2024, the pilot is focused on optimizing overseas tourist use and expanding cross-border applications of e-CNY.
Cross-border CBDC projects
Click on a project to learn more about participating countries and use cases
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Timeline: Race for the future of money
Number of countries and currency unions exploring CBDC over time
The ABCs of CBDCs
What is a CBDC?
A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is the digital form of a country’s fiat currency that is also a claim on the central bank. Instead of printing money, the central bank issues electronic coins or accounts backed by the full faith and credit of the government.
But don’t digital currencies already exist?
There are already thousands of digital currencies, commonly called cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the most well-known fully decentralized cryptocurrency. Another type of cryptocurrency are stablecoins, whose value is pegged to an asset or a fiat currency like the dollar. Cryptocurrencies run on distributed-ledger technology, meaning that multiple devices all over the world, not one central hub, are constantly verifying the accuracy of the transaction. But this is different from a central bank issuing a digital currency.
So why would a government get into digital currencies?
There are many reasons to explore digital currencies, and the motivation of different countries for issuing CBDCs depends on their economic situation. Some common motivations are: promoting financial inclusion by providing easy and safer access to money for unbanked and underbanked populations; introducing competition and resilience in the domestic payments market, which might need incentives to provide cheaper and better access to money; increasing efficiency in payments and lowering transaction costs; creating programmable money and improving transparency in money flows; and providing for the seamless and easy flow of monetary and fiscal policy.
What are the challenges?
There are several challenges, and each one needs careful consideration before a country launches a CBDC. Citizens could pull too much money out of banks at once by purchasing CBDCs, triggering a run on banks—affecting their ability to lend and sending a shock to interest rates. This is especially a problem for countries with unstable financial systems. CBDCs also carry operational risks, since they are vulnerable to cyber attacks and need to be made resilient against them. Finally, CBDCs require a complex regulatory framework including privacy, consumer protection, and anti-money laundering standards which need to be made more robust before adopting this technology.
What are the national security implications of a CBDC?
New payments systems create externalities that impact the daily lives of citizens, and can possibly jeopardize the national security objectives of the country. They can, for example, limit the United States’ ability to track cross-border flows and enforce sanctions. In the long term, the absence of US leadership and standards setting can have geopolitical consequences, especially if China and other countries maintain their first-mover advantage in the development of CBDCs. Our work on digital currencies at the GeoEconomics Center is at this nexus of the future of money and national security.
Research Team:Ananya Kumar,Alisha Chhangani, Leila Hamilton, and Jessie Yin
Contributions from:Nitya Biyani,Stefan de Villiers,Matt Goodman, Niels Graham,William Howlett,Amy Jeon,Reddy Lee,Roberto Lopez-Irizarry, Abhinav Vishwanath, Varsha Shankar,Greg Brownstein, and Phillip Meng.
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