RBA & DFCRC Release CBDC Research Project Findings
(24 August 2023 – Australia) The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) have released the findings from a joint research project exploring use cases for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia.
The RBA issued a limited-scale ‘pilot’ CBDC as part of the project that was an authentic legal claim on the central bank. The pilot CBDC was used by specific industry participants to demonstrate how a CBDC could be used to provide innovative payment and settlement services to businesses and consumers.
The use cases explored in the project “Australian CBDC Pilot for Digital Finance Innovation” highlighted a range of areas where a CBDC could enhance the functioning of the payments system while the project also raised a number of legal, regulatory, technical and operational issues associated with a CBDC flagged for consideration in future research.
“The project yielded valuable insights into how a CBDC, alongside other innovations in digital money, could potentially unlock benefits for the Australian financial system and the wider economy. It also highlighted the benefits of close engagement between industry and policymakers in exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with innovations in digital money” commented RBA Assistant Governor, Financial System, Brad Jones.
“The key findings from the project will help to shape the next phase of the RBA’s research program into the future of money in Australia. Alongside our ongoing work on cross border payments, this will include deepening our understanding of the role that tokenised asset markets and programmable payments could have in the Australian economy” Mr Jones added.
“The report underscores that innovation in finance is a continuous journey. The strong industry engagement in this project speaks to the importance of collaboration between central banks as ultimate issuers of national currency, and industry experts driving its potential use cases. As we move forward, our research on CBDC could look to target use cases where CBDC has the best potential to provide an infrastructure layer for further innovation in financial products and services” stated DFCRC CEO, Dr Andreas Furche.
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