It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all of the announcements from a raft of central banks and think tanks but here are some that caught my attention:
Official Announcements
- The UK passed legislation under which England, Wales and Northern Ireland are among the first countries in the world to confirm in law that digital assets - such as cryptocurrency or non-fungible tokens - can now be recognised as personal property. This will provide greater protections and ensure they are treated like traditional assets.
- The Bank of England launched Phase 2 of the Digital Pound Lab - an experimental platform which will enable hands-on experimentation for industry and the Bank. It is not a regulatory sandbox and no real customers or real money payments will be involved. The Lab will provide a simulated environment to test the potential capabilities of a digital pound, helping explore the feasibility of different use cases.
Its aims are:
- co-creating use cases: collaborating with industry to test use cases that will contribute to the assessment of whether to build a digital pound;
- understanding business models: collaborating with industry to understand potential business models for Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) and External Service Interface Providers (ESIPs);
- supporting innovation: assessing the requirements for a digital pound to provide a platform for innovation; and
- informing the Bank's emerging thinking: contributing to the Bank's thinking on digital pound technology and digital currency technology more generally.
- The Bank of England has launched a consultation on its Proposed regulatory regime for sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins. The deadline for responses is 10 February 2026.
- The Bank of England published minutes of the June meeting of the CBDC Academic Advisory Group which had met to discuss:
- Is a digital pound consistent with the BoE’s statutory objectives?
- Does the digital pound design proposition meet best practice for a secure provision?
- Is a digital pound likely to meet the core objective of payments innovation?
- Is a digital pound likely to meet the core objective of money uniformity, and is it the best option?
- Can a digital pound be financially viable for the public sector and private sector participants?
- The Bank of England published minutes of the May meeting of the CBDC Engagement Forum which had met to discuss:
- Offline payments report and how some organisations already support offline activity with shared liability
- Privacy and three models of data access: minimum data access, a GDPR-style model, and enhanced privacy protection
- The role of intermediaries - Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) could provide core services, while Enhanced Service Interface Providers (ESIPs) could offer value-added services
- The European Central Bank issued a report on the Progress on the preparation phase of a digital euro noting:
- development of the draft digital euro scheme rulebook
- selection of providers for the digital euro service platform (DESP)
- the launch of an innovation platform to explore how the digital euro could support innovation in payments and address new market needs
- analysis to ensure the digital euro remains operational and resilient in a wide range of scenarios, including in emergencies such as power or network outages
- user research focusing on payment preferences and behaviours
With plans to launch a digital euro in 2029, the Eurosystem will focus on three main workstreams: advancing technical readiness, deepening market engagement and supporting the legislative process.
Resources, Reports and Announcements
- The Bank of England released findings of Project Meridian Securities which explored how synchronisation can act as a bridge between existing real-time gross settlement infrastructures and emerging tokenised securities settlement solutions. It found that synchronisation can combine the programmability of DLT, with the trust and familiarity of settling in central bank money through conventional RTGS systems, enabling a hybrid environment that supports both manual and automated transactions. This can be achieved without implementing any programmability features into the central bank money held in RTGS beyond allowing earmarking. Its main findings were that:
Extending programmability to traditional infrastructures: By building on the strong foundations of existing infrastructure, synchronisation offers a practical and incremental path to innovation – one that does not require building new cash settlement systems but instead provides an effective bridge between existing settlement infrastructure and tokenised asset platforms.
- Improved liquidity management: By embedding the terms of repos and liquidity preferences into smart contracts, a synchronisation operator can enable real-time validation and settlement, reducing operational friction and improving responsiveness to intraday liquidity needs.
- Cross-platform interoperability: Synchronisation offers a practical solution for bridging diverse systems, enabling atomic settlement and liquidity co-ordination across multiple platforms.
- The IMF issued an update on CBDCs. It found that:
- o Global interest in CBDCs continues, with the most recent survey revealing that 91% of 93 surveyed central banks are exploring retail CBDCs (rCBDC), wholesale CBDCs (wCBDC), or both—with work on wCBDC progressing to more advanced stages than rCBDC
- o Rollout continues with:
- Kazakhstan in the process of rolling out its Digital Tenge for full launch by the end of 2025, to support use cases such as programmability, settlement for digital assets, and cross-border payments.
- Russia plans to have its largest banks enable Digital Ruble transactions to their clients from September 2026
- Brazil plans to launch its Drex CBDC in 2026, in two phases (Valor International, 2025)
- Bank of England has recently set up a Digital Pound Lab to co-create and test different potential use cases with the industry to better understand potential business models for payment service providers
- European Central Bank has continued its work on the digital euro scheme rulebook and intensified experimentation, user research, and stakeholder engagement and EU finance ministers have agreed on a roadmap for launching a digital euro.
- Expanding CBDC pilots in major economies underscores the importance of integration, interoperability, and user centricity:
- China’s e-CNY pilot has been extended to Hong Kong, allowing residents to open and top up e-CNY wallets via FPS—representing the world’s first FPS-CBDC linkage and an advancement toward cross-border payments interoperability
- Domestically, China is also trying to encourage adoption by integrating the e-CNY into two payment platforms−WeChat Pay and Alipay
- India expanded its e-Rupee pilot to include offline and programmability features, as well as allowed certain nonbanks to offer e-Rupee wallets to enhance adoption and improve distribution. It also launched a pilot for the settlement of government securities via the wholesale e-Rupee.
- Some countries have paused rCBDC efforts altogether following an assessment of limited domestic needs. Some Advanced Economies, like Canada and Australia, after conducting years of extensive research and consultation on rCBDC, found that existing payment systems already meet public needs effectively and concluded that there is limited added value from issuing a rCBDC at this time.
- rCBDC adoption remains very limited:
- less than 2% of the population using rCBDC in Nigeria, and less than 1% in Jamaica and The Bahamas.
- In Jamaica, the uptake of JAM-DEX has been driven by government incentives. However, authorities remain determined to address first-mover challenges by working to integrate the JAM-DEX into point of-sale (POS) systems for merchants, including testing dynamic QR codes.
- The Bahamas has relied on incentive programs like the SandDollar Holiday Rebate program to encourage users to activate new wallets, load funds, and receive rebates for spending. The central bank plans to require commercial banks to distribute CBDC in 2026, shifting away from incentives toward regulatory mandates.
- Interest in wCBDC is rapidly rising, driven by the desire to understand how tokenisation could enhance financial market infrastructures.
- Project Acacia by the Reserve Bank of Australia demonstrated that placing both wCBDC and tokenized assets on a shared programmable platform can yield efficiency gains and reduce settlement risks.
- Project Agora, a large collaboration involving seven central banks and over 40 private sector financial firms now in its design phase, underscores the value of public-private coordination in designing interoperable platforms that integrate tokenised central money and commercial bank money, reinforcing the potential for a coordinated ecosystem that supports future financial innovation.
- Project Helvetia by the Swiss National Bank is testing two approaches (wCBDC and RTGS links) for settling tokenised assets transactions, to evaluate flexibility and long-term integration.
- The Eurosystem in 2024 also tested three interoperability solutions comprising a full DLT solution, a TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) hash-link, and a trigger solution.
- The IMF issued a paper – Understanding Stablecoins to explain and document the phenomenon of stablecoins, and present their potential benefits, while providing a holistic view of risks, policy frameworks, and emerging regulations.
- Sony Plans To Launch its own Stablecoin In 2026 for use within the Playstation Ecosystem
- ING, Banca Sella, KBC, Danske Bank, DekaBank, UniCredit, SEB, CaixaBank, and Raiffeisen Bank International announced a new joint venture to launch a MiCAR-compliant, euro-denominated stablecoin. A new company has been set up in the Netherlands and plans to seek authorisation from the Dutch Central Bank as an e-money institution. The first issuance is targeted for the second half of 2026. Each member bank will be able to offer wallets, custody, and related services connected to the digital token, which is designed to enable instant, low-cost transactions, programmable payments, and 24/7 cross-border settlement.
- Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citi, MUFG, Barclays, TD Bank, Santander, and BNP Paribas are jointly exploring the issuance of stablecoins pegged to G7 currencies. The initiative is examining whether banks can jointly create assets on public blockchains while maintaining full regulatory compliance and robust risk controls. The participants have framed the exploration as a response to rising demand for digital settlement assets that combine the reliability of deposits with blockchain efficiency.
- Travers Smith wrote a useful analysis of the current position of the Bank of England with respect to stablecoins.
