A trial program for its own central bank digital currency will be undertaken, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) (CBDC). The Australian Treasury, the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center (DFCRC), and the RBA will work together to conduct the trial.
A “limited-scale” CBDC will be developed as part of the initiative over the course of a year in a “ring-fenced” setting. It intends to investigate the possible applications and financial advantages of digital money.
The CBDC will include real-world applications developed for both consumers and companies by a variety of industry players. The RBA also stated that further information on the project’s goals and methodology will be released in the upcoming months.
The CEO of the DFCRC, Andreas Furche, recognized that central bank digital currencies had previously been shown to be technically possible.
The RBA joins a number of other central banks in advocating for the implementation of CBDC. Research is being done by the Federal Reserve in the US to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the new technology. The European Central Bank is presently doing research on its digital euro.
The first nation to implement a CBDC in practice was China. The nation launched the digital yuan pilot in 2019, and the initiative is now active in more than 20 locations. Transactions made with the CBDC totalled $12.3 billion in the first five months of 2022.
