CBDC Financial News

A Russian beauty salon in Yekaterinburg has become one of the first businesses in the nation to accept a digital ruble payment – breaking new ground for the nation’s CBDC.

The Regulated Liability Network (RLN) has completed its United Kingdom discovery phase and is prepared to proceed to a use case with retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to its latest report. The RLN project seeks to accommodate central bank, commercial bank and regulated non-bank transactions operating within “partitions” on a single network.

The European Union's (EU) upcoming digital euro may face hurdles in non-euro member states, according to a review conducted by the European Parliament. 

Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das has touted Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a solution to 'high cost, low speed' cross-border payments. 

The European Central Bank (ECB) is quite happy with the European Commission's (EC) legislative proposals for the digital euro. ECB executive board member Fabio Panetta told the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in a speech on Sept. 4 that the proposals “put Europe at the forefront of advanced economies” in CBDC development, potentially heading off private dominance of the financial sector and the ills that implies.

India's largest public sector bank, State Bank of India (SBI), has introduced UPI (Unified Payments Interface) interoperability with Digital Rupee, India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

While China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yaun, goes through technological and business model upgrades, wallet providers should facilitate payment options in all retail scenarios, according to a statement made by Changchun Mu, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China, on Sept. 3.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee, will have enhanced usability, Yes Bank announced Aug. 30. This was thanks to Yes Bank’s integration of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with the RBI digital rupee app. Now Yes Bank account holders will be able to make transactions with the digital rupee by scanning UPI QR codes.

IBM has some ideas about what it will take to make the digital euro a success, which it shared in a recent blog post. It suggested five items for designers to help the European Central Bank (ECB) digital currency “enter the highly competitive, multifaceted, and heterogeneous payments landscape in the Eurozone.”

Bank messaging network SWIFT has said that blockchain interoperability is a better approach in the short term to financial solutions than uniting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and other assets into a single ledger.

Transport operators in Jamaica have expressed interest in using the country's central bank digital currency (CBDC) for payments. 

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani made many announcements at the company’s 46th announcement on Monday. One of them being that the conglomerate's financial services division Jio Financial Services (JFS) is keen to introduce blockchain-related products as well as digital rupee. «JFS products will not just compete with current industry benchmarks but also explore path-breaking features such as blockchain-based platforms and CBDC. They will adhere to the highest standards of security, regulatory norms and ensure protection of customer transaction data at all times,» Ambani told shareholders at the company's AGM.Blockchain rose to prominence as the underlying technology for Bitcoin. Blockchain solutions is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks and is deemed to be very transparent as all the stakeholders can view progress in real-time. Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) allow the recording, sharing and transfer of data or value without the need for a central record keeping as in the case of a traditional ledger. Such records are immutable and non-repudiable. «Jio Financial Services is uniquely positioned to disrupt India's financial sector. By leveraging open-source blockchain technology, JFS can build apps and smart contracts on top of India's Aadhaar stack. This opens up a host of opportunities, from microfinance to SME lending to serve a diverse range of financial needs,» said Rajagopal Menon, Vice-President at WazirX.

Bus and taxi operators in Jamaica are eager to use the country’s in-house central bank digital currency (CBDC) — Jam-Dex — as locals seek operational efficiencies and reduced costs and security risks.

Russian banks will have the opportunity to question the Central Bank on its digital ruble pilot next month.

Digital ruble scammers have reportedly struck in multiple Russian regions, with fraudsters apparently hoping to dupe citizens who do not yet fully understand how the CBDC works.

According to a recent survey, conducted by the joint team of Saint Petersburg Exchange and the Russian Trading System (RTS), more than half of Russian citizens are willing to store their money in a central bank digital currency (CBDC). However, when it comes to storing more than 20,000 rubles (roughly $212), only 17% trust digital ruble. 

The South Korean central bank, the Bank of Korea (BOK), is set to showcase a “blueprint” for its CBDC in September as the nation looks to speed up the progress of its digital KRW.

A new research conducted by banking giant, Citi, shows that most financial institutions are leaning toward adopting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for faster global payments.

Discussions around shortening local financial settlement cycles within the next five years have most securities firms eyeing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 

The Russian banks MTS and PSB have begun testing the digital ruble, with “entrepreneurs” using the CBDC to pay for “services.”

Australia's central bank has completed it's pilot of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) exploring use cases for a potential e-AUD, finding its useful in four main areas including enabling complex payments and asset tokenization.