The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has announced a partnership with Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Perpetual and ConsenSys Software to explore the use of a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) using distributed ledger technology (DLT).
The project is currently limited to the wholesale market, reflecting the RBA’s conclusion in a recent bulletin on the Design Considerations, Rationales and Implications of a Retail CBDC that there is currently no strong public policy case to introduce a CBDC for retail use.