The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) today released a report on the findings from a joint research project involving industry that explored potential use cases for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia. The project involved the RBA issuing a limited-scale ‘pilot’ CBDC that was a real legal claim on the RBA. The pilot CBDC was used by selected industry participants to demonstrate how a CBDC could be used to provide innovative payment and settlement services to Australian households and businesses. The various use cases explored in the project ... (full story)

The payments landscape continues to evolve rapidly. This reflects significant changes in the payment preferences of households and firms, alongside innovation in underlying technologies. In this context, considerable research has been undertaken over recent years, both in Australia and other jurisdictions, into the potential role that a central bank digital currency (CBDC) could play in the payments system in the future. CBDC refers to a new digital form of money, denominated in a national currency, that would be issued as a direct liability of the central bank. It could be designed for use by households and firms ... (full story)