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Modernisation of the Trinidad and Tobago National Payment System
Modernisation of the Trinidad and Tobago National Payment System
The global evolution of payments is changing the payments landscape of Trinidad and Tobago. The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago has seen new players offering new payment services and products. These new products and services, supported by fintech solutions, create new risks to the domestic payment systems that require management and control. The Bank has therefore embarked on a strategy to modernize Trinidad and Tobago’s National Payment System by 1) developing comprehensive payment systems legislation, 2) enhancing its engagement with fintechs, and 3) examining cross-border payment activity consistent with the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Recommendations.
#CBDC#PaymentSystems#Trinidad&Tobago#DFC
·web.archive.org·
Modernisation of the Trinidad and Tobago National Payment System
Madagascar's central bank preparing for potential CBDC pilot
Madagascar's central bank preparing for potential CBDC pilot
[September 11, 2024] eCurrency was selected by Banky Foiben’i Madagasikara (BFM) to provide consulting services for the e-Ariary central bank digital currency (CBDC) project. BFM plans to move on to a potential pilot phase of the e-Ariary project, once the preparation is successfully completed. See also: https://www.benzinga.com/content/40812814/bfm-et-ecurrency-continuent-les-pr-paratifs-en-vue-du-lancement-potentiel-de-la-phase-pilote-de-le-a
#Fintech#CBDC#Madagascar#DFC
·consumerworldreport.com·
Madagascar's central bank preparing for potential CBDC pilot
Paths to success for a Digital Pound and consumer attitudes to adoption
Paths to success for a Digital Pound and consumer attitudes to adoption
The University of Manchester published a Fintech white paper that provides insights that can influence policy and design for a successful Digital Pound implementation. Whilst the initial findings suggest that consumers may quickly understand the concept of a digital pound, it seems unlikely that the perceived usefulness of new CBDC use cases alone will drive widespread adoption. Instead, successful adoption will likely depend on the perceived ease of use of the Digital Pound, which can be achieved through effective consumer experience design and seamless integration into existing financial ecosystems, encouraged by nuanced government incentivization policies.
#CBDC#Fintech#UnitedKingdom#DFC
·alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk·
Paths to success for a Digital Pound and consumer attitudes to adoption
Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology
Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (XO) "prohibiting the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) within the jurisdiction of the United States" on the grounds that they "threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States". The XO uses the standard BIS (2020) CBDC definition: "a form of digital money or monetary value, denominated in the national unit of account, that is a direct liability of the central bank" which is a bit problematic, because it encompasses both retail and wholesale CBDC. It's problematic because, by that definition, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is already running a WCBDC in the form of commercial bank reserve and settlement accounts. Instead, the White House could have followed the language of a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Tom Emmers, the "CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act". It starts with the same CBDC definition as the White House XO, but goes on to narrow down the impact of the bill to prohibit the Fed from "offer[ing] products or services directly to an individual; maintain[ing] an account on behalf of an individual; or issu[ing] a central bank digital currency, or any digital asset that is substantially similar under any other name or label, directly to an individual [or] indirectly to an individual through a financial institution or other intermediary… [This] may not be construed to prohibit any dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless, and private, and fully preserves the privacy protections of United States coins and physical currency." https://emmer.house.gov/_cache/files/1/b/1b5d3177-a835-4d7f-857c-8eaa765dc2ec/C9A5E6203EC89BFB3F9DEF702726560B.cbdcs-final.pdf
#Fintech#CBDC#UnitedStates#Regulation#DFC
·whitehouse.gov·
Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology
Privacy-enhancing technologies for digital payments: mapping the landscape
Privacy-enhancing technologies for digital payments: mapping the landscape
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper on how technology can enhance privacy in digital payment systems. It classifies privacy-enhancing designs along the dimensions of privacy versus auditability, and soft institution- versus hard technology-based solutions. It maps existing technologies into this taxonomy and assesses them. Sophisticated techniques allow having both hard privacy and limited transparency by employing hard-coded rules that dictate which data remains inaccessible. On balance, there is promise in novel concepts like zero-knowledge-proofs, but current technologies suffer from security and computational capacity limitations in.
#Fintech#BIS#CBDC#Privacy#PETs#Payments#DFC
·bis.org·
Privacy-enhancing technologies for digital payments: mapping the landscape
ECB looking for consultant to support digital euro offline functionality
ECB looking for consultant to support digital euro offline functionality
The European Central Bank (ECB) is looking for a senior payments industry expert to provide consultancy services on a 40% part-time basis to support the project team designing and developing the digital euro’s offline functionality. The successful candidate will support the team in (i) defining the deployment of the digital euro’s offline functionality in end users’ devices in line with the requirements set in the draft legislative proposal; (ii) designing and implementing an optimal user experience for offline contactless payments via smartphones; (iii) assessing how an offline digital euro can be integrated within the existing terminal landscape at the point of sale; (iv) supporting the drafting of detailed requirements for the digital euro’s offline functionality.
#CBDC#Eurozone#Fintech#ECB#Offline#Payments#DFC
·ecb.europa.eu·
ECB looking for consultant to support digital euro offline functionality
Public Use and Distribution of CBDC During Thailand’s Retail Pilot Program
Public Use and Distribution of CBDC During Thailand’s Retail Pilot Program
The Journal of Economics and Statistics (JES) published a paper by Bank of Thailand (BOT) staff published a paper that analyzes end-to-end transaction data from the central bank's seven-month 2023 retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. Findings indicate that the three financial service providers (FSPs) manage their CBDC holdings and liquidity by adjusting redemptions but do not adjust issuances in response to retail payments. Retail users, on the other hand, tend to use CBDC as a payment method, with usage positively correlated with reward incentives. The network topology analysis indicates that the hybrid architecture tested in this pilot creates a less connected network. CBDC is distributed sparsely and slowly within the network, relying heavily on a few key FSPs. This suggests the current distribution model is limited in effectiveness and could be improved.
#FinTech#CBDC#Thailand#DFC
·degruyter.com·
Public Use and Distribution of CBDC During Thailand’s Retail Pilot Program
Secure and Privacy-preserving CBDC Offline Payments using a Secure Element
Secure and Privacy-preserving CBDC Offline Payments using a Secure Element
It is important to also rely on preventive measures that reduce the scale of double-spending attacks on offline payment platforms. An example of such a measure is secure elements. These however are limited in compute and storage, making the design of solutions that offer comparable privacy guarantees to those of physical cash challenging. We address this with a protocol that offloads most of the payment computation to the user’s mobile device and restricts the computation on the secure element to deleting spent tokens, and generating a signature with a computation equivalent to that of elliptic curve digital signature algorithms (ECDSA). We claim that the use of mobile devices or enhanced smart card-based devices are required for secure consumer-to-consumer payments. To further harden the protocol, we enable the efficient identification of double spenders on the off-chance an attacker successfully double spends. Finally, we prove its security in the ideal/real world paradigm, and evaluate its performance to demonstrate its practicality. We use Pedersen commitments to allow one to commit to a vector of messages m without leaking any information about the committed vector.
#Payments#Offline#DFC
·eprint.iacr.org·
Secure and Privacy-preserving CBDC Offline Payments using a Secure Element
Fostering Empathy for Canadians Facing Challenges with Digital Systems
Fostering Empathy for Canadians Facing Challenges with Digital Systems
The Bank of Canada (BOC) published a paper on designing inclusive and user-friendly digital payment systems, focusing on fostering empathy for and identifying the needs of users who exhibit behaviors that indicate they encounter accessibility or usability barriers in digital systems. Specifically, it examines two types of users based on two common behaviors: users who rely on others to perform tasks and those who avoid interacting with technology. The findings show that individuals in the two groups avoid systems they expect lack usability. Addressing these issues through standard accessibility practices, live assistance and thoughtful interface design can enhance user interaction and trust. For accessibility issues that cannot realistically be eliminated, technology that enhances cooperative relationships and allows account owners to control information sharing is key.
#CBDC#Canada#Fintech#DFC
·bankofcanada.ca·
Fostering Empathy for Canadians Facing Challenges with Digital Systems
Are Europe’s Tokenization Experiments Building Blocks for a Digital Capital Markets Union?
Are Europe’s Tokenization Experiments Building Blocks for a Digital Capital Markets Union?

This article is a reflection on the ECB DLT trials and the DLT Pilot regime, and what they might say about the possible trajectory of the evolution of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project. It concludes that Europe’s push toward tokenization and a Digital CMU feels more like an evolutionary process than a revolutionary one. The ECB’s trials and the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime signal genuine interest in modernizing financial infrastructure, but progress will be slow, measured, and tightly controlled. While it’s unlikely that a bold, new platform will emerge purely from private sector experimentation, a carefully managed public-private partnership could chart the path forward. Whether this effort leads to a more integrated, efficient capital market or simply another chapter in Europe’s long history of cautious innovation remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Europe’s digital finance ambitions are no longer just theoretical—they’re being tested, one experiment at a time.

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#Fintech#Tokenization#Eurozone#CBDC#wCBDC#Settlement#DFC
·linkedin.com·
Are Europe’s Tokenization Experiments Building Blocks for a Digital Capital Markets Union?
Progress update: The digital pound and the payments landscape
Progress update: The digital pound and the payments landscape

The Bank of England (BOE) published a summary of its work during 2024 on a digital pound, including how it relates to the evolving payments landscape. It also published an initial design note as part of its work on a blueprint for the central bank digital currency (CBDC). The blueprint is one of four workstreams in the digital pound design phase. Its purpose is to provide a comprehensive proposition for a digital pound, including technology, operational, ecosystem, commercial, regulatory and financial considerations, and the roles that both the Bank and the private sector could play in delivering it. The Bank also will launch a Digital Pound Lab to enable hands-on experimentation to test API functionality, innovative use cases and potential business models for payment interface providers (PIPs) and external service interface providers (ESIPs). https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/report/2025/blueprint-framework-design-note

#Fintech#CBDC#UnitedKingdom#Sandboxes#DFC
·bankofengland.co.uk·
Progress update: The digital pound and the payments landscape
BIS Innovation Hub sets out 2025 work programme
BIS Innovation Hub sets out 2025 work programme
The BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH) posted its 2025-26 work programme. The BISIH started 16 new projects in 2024, and the project portfolio consisted of 26 active projects at the start of 2025. The work programme for 2025 includes further developing ongoing projects such as Project Agora in which partners from seven central banks and over 40 private sector financial institutions are exploring how tokenization can enhance wholesale cross-border payments. The first two new projects in 2025 will explore AI-based tools supporting supervision and green finance. https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/about.htm
#Fintech#BIS#DFC
·finextra.com·
BIS Innovation Hub sets out 2025 work programme
Sberbank calls for digital ruble launch delay
Sberbank calls for digital ruble launch delay
Sberbank is calling for a delay of the digital ruble launch scheduled for July 1, 2025 because its central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform is still being developed. However, many of the smaller Russian banks that have been participating in the pilot since late 2023, report being ready to go on schedule, but Sberbank only joined in December 2024 leaving it just over six months to prepare. A representative of Sberbank, said that the introduction of the digital ruble requires significant financial investments, including tens of billions of rubles for the development and integration of new functionality. https://www.pravda.ru/news/economics/2159660-cifrovoi-rubl/
#Fintech#CBDC#Russia#DFC
·ledgerinsights.com·
Sberbank calls for digital ruble launch delay
Historical Experience of Money and Future Expectations
Historical Experience of Money and Future Expectations
The evolution of money has gone through three major transitions and one key historical event: the first transition from commodity money and precious metal to fiduciary money and fiat money issued by the government in the 18th and 19th century; the second transition from the commercial bank note to the central bank’s monopoly on currency issuance in the 19th and 20th centuries; the third transition that money has developed to be a monetary policy tool since the 17th century; the event that Bank of England took the place of the traders and business owners at that time to issue banknotes and set up branches to provide payment services to the general public so as to solve the financial crisis at the early 19th century. The four parts of history are very inspiring for our understanding of the digital form of money, for example, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
#Fintech#Money#History#CBDC#DFC
·papers.ssrn.com·
Historical Experience of Money and Future Expectations
The Digital Euro: From Legal Tender to Payment Services Providers
The Digital Euro: From Legal Tender to Payment Services Providers
This paper delves into the proposals for regulating the digital euro, establishing a connection between its legal standing and physical euro cash, and requiring payment services providers to offer digital euro services regardless of their location. It raises questions about the fundamental implications of treating the digital euro as legal tender. However, labelling the digital euro as a legal tender raises uncertainties about its core nature and purpose. The analysis challenges the notion that the digital euro is merely a digital version of physical cash, emphasising the evolving roles of central bank digital currencies and their legal and policy ramifications. With the digitalisation of the economy in mind, it examines how the involvement of payment services providers in distributing the digital euro could impact individual and economic rights. It underscores the importance of balancing security measures, privacy, and data protection while fostering competition. The paper aims to provide policymakers with insights into the design and regulation of the digital euro, underlining the necessity of clarifying its legal standing and reconsidering its classification as legal tender
#Fintech#CBDC#Eurozone#Regulation#LegalTender#DFC
·link.springer.com·
The Digital Euro: From Legal Tender to Payment Services Providers
Tokenisation of assets and DLTs in financial markets
Tokenisation of assets and DLTs in financial markets
The OECD published a paper that analyzes possible reasons for the absence of a market for tokenized assets and puts forward policy considerations for financial supervisors and policy makers, to which Josiah Hernandez and I contributed material on the wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) aspects. Possible impediments tokenization growth identified include "chicken and egg" problems (e.g., the lack of liquidity and absence of an ecosystem for tokenized assets, and the need for distributed ledger technology (DLT) payment rails (including wholesale CBDC) to exist for the payment leg of settlement), market functioning challenges of instant and "atomic" settlement, the lack of custodians to onboard investors and assets, and legal issues (e.g., the legal status of smart contracts, token ownership not necessarily according ownership to the underlying assets). It concludes that "with the proper foundations in place, new possibilities of potential efficiencies and productivity gains in tokenized assets markets can be brought about in a manner that need not negatively impact financial stability, law enforcement, local and global policy regimes".
#Tokenization#DLT#Fintech#CBDC#wCBDC#OECD#Regulation#DFC
·oecd.org·
Tokenisation of assets and DLTs in financial markets
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for CBDC Solutions
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for CBDC Solutions
The Bank of Canada published a paper that explores the use of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) in the design of central bank digital currency (CBDC) systems, potentially paving the way for solutions that better safeguard end-user privacy and meet rigorous data protection standards. PETs can offer robust protection for data throughout their lifecycle, whether stored, in transit or during processing, and ensure privacy is maintained even when data are extensively shared or analyzed. However, they can introduce performance overheads and add complexity to systems, and their effectiveness and applicability are currently limited due to their early stage of development. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of how PETs can transform privacy design in financial systems and the implications of their broader adoption.
#CBDC#Privacy#Fintech#PETs#DFC
·bankofcanada.ca·
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for CBDC Solutions
IZNES simulates wCBDC usage with Banque de France
IZNES simulates wCBDC usage with Banque de France
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) investment fund platform IZNES shared details about experiments during the recent Eurosystem wholesale DLT settlement trials that ended in November. It conducted two sets of experiments that used the Banque de France’s wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). Read more about them here: https://iznes.io/en/2024/12/23/dlt-settlement-in-central-bank-money-by-iznes-with-eurosystem/
#Fintech#CBDC#wCBDC#Settlement#Eurozone#France#Tokenization#DFC
·ledgerinsights.com·
IZNES simulates wCBDC usage with Banque de France
Assessing the impact of introducing a digital euro on monetary policy implementation
Assessing the impact of introducing a digital euro on monetary policy implementation
Banca d'Italia published a paper that proposes a methodological framework for estimating the maximum amount of digital euro (D€) that is consistent with a smooth monetary policy implementation (MPI) in the euro area (EA). To this end, it considers that monetary policy is implemented smoothly following the introduction of the D€ when i) the remaining aggregate liquidity in the EA is sufficient to anchor short-term rates to the deposit facility rate and ii) EA national banking sectors can largely meet D€ demand with excess reserves and additional central bank credit. It estimates that, for a smooth MPI, the maximum amount of D€ should not exceed EUR 1.7 trillion under an approach that takes into account the heterogeneity across EA countries and banks and prevents any EA national banking sector from facing a too severe liquidity distress following the introduction of the D€. The analysis suggests the importance of refinancing operations with a broad collateral framework in the Eurosystem operational framework, due to their key role in allowing the central bank to elastically withstand additional reserve demand stemming from the introduction of the D€.
#CBDC#Eurozone#MonetaryPolicy#Fintech#DFC
·bancaditalia.it·
Assessing the impact of introducing a digital euro on monetary policy implementation
CBDC Spells Doom for Financial Privacy
CBDC Spells Doom for Financial Privacy
Considering that the US Bank Secrecy Act was passed in 1970 as a way to monitor foreign accounts and is now responsible for over 26 million reports on Americans a year, it should be no surprise that people are worried about the threat a CBDC could pose to financial privacy. There is little doubt that government officials will tout the risks of terrorists, drug cartels, and money launderers to justify the surveillance that a CBDC would bring. But surveilling “for bad actors” inevitably means surveilling innocent people as well. It’s time to reduce financial surveillance, not further entrench it. Introducing a CBDC would mark the end of what little financial privacy is left in the United States.
#CBDC#Fintech#UnitedStates#Cato#DFC
·cato.org·
CBDC Spells Doom for Financial Privacy
Three transactions have already been made with the BCB's Drex
Three transactions have already been made with the BCB's Drex
To date, at least three transactions have reportedly been made with the Banco do Brasil (BCB) Drex central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of its proof-of-concept experimentation. One was carried out between two private banks (BTG Pactual and Itaú Bank) to test the compatibility and the efficiency of the payment network. The second was between the BCB and a public-sector bank (Caixa Econômica Federal). The third, in September 2024, was an interbank transaction between a public bank (Caixa) and a private digital bank (Inter). All were presumably conducted in the BCB's Drex sandbox.
#CBDC#Fintech#Brazil#wCBDC#DFC
·revistaforum.com.br·
Three transactions have already been made with the BCB's Drex
Banque de France carried out two tokenized asset transactions in tokenised assets
Banque de France carried out two tokenized asset transactions in tokenised assets
The Banque de France carried out two transactions involving tokenised assets: a reverse repurchase agreement with Société Générale and an outright securities purchase with BNP Paribas. Société Générale pledged bonds issued in 2020 on the public blockchain Ethereum as collateral, in exchange for CBDC tokens issued by the Banque de France on the DL3S interoperability solution (distributed ledger). Both parties used the technological capabilities of the Société Générale Forge platform, which acted as registrar for the issuer. The Banque de France purchased a tokenised euro area sovereign bond in the secondary market, and successfully tested two corporate actions – coupon payment and redemption – both of which were settled on the Banque de France DL3S platform. BNPP's securities business acted as subscriber and registrar for the Banque de France, operating on the Neobonds blockchain.
#Fintech#CBDC#Tokenization#Settlement#Eurozone#France#Repo#wCBDC#DFC
·banque-france.fr·
Banque de France carried out two tokenized asset transactions in tokenised assets
Digital ruble legislation submitted to Russian State Duma
Digital ruble legislation submitted to Russian State Duma
A bill has reportedly been introduced to Russia’s State Duma that that would make the use of the digital ruble central bank digital currency (CBDC), mandatory for banks and merchants. The draft law proposes a phased rollout starting on July 1, 2025, with systemically important banks, and expanding to all banks by 2027. It would make accepting digital ruble payments mandatory for retailers with annual revenues over 30 million rubles by July 2025, with the threshold dropping to 20 million rubles by July 2026. The draft bill would also mandate the use of a universal QR code system for almost all digital ruble payments.
#Fintech#CBDC#Russia#DFC
·news.bitcoin.com·
Digital ruble legislation submitted to Russian State Duma
Wholesale CBDC Approaches, Implementation Strategies and Use Cases
Wholesale CBDC Approaches, Implementation Strategies and Use Cases
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) published a report that examines the key motivations, models, and policy considerations for wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). It discusses the need for wholesale CBDCs as risk-free settlement assets to support digital transaction infrastructure and mitigate potential instability arising from reliance on tokenized private assets. Central banks are considering wholesale CBDCs as an alternative to upgrading real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, aiming to keep pace with programmable, always-on infrastructures that facilitate real-time, cross-currency liquidity and tokenized asset transactions.
#CBDC#wCBDC#Fintech#DFC
·jbs.cam.ac.uk·
Wholesale CBDC Approaches, Implementation Strategies and Use Cases
Russian banks authorized to halt transfers with CBDCs for days
Russian banks authorized to halt transfers with CBDCs for days
The Bank of Russia introduced new rules, effective on February 23, 2025, requiring banks to suspend digital ruble transactions for two days if they are suspected of involving fraud. If such a transaction is detected, the bank will notify the customer about possible fraud. If the customer doesn't confirm it by the next day, the transaction will be canceled. Similar measures have been in effect for ordinary transfers since July 24, 2024. https://cbr.ru/press/event/?id=23261
#CBDC#CryptoAssets#Fraud#Fintech#DFC
·crypto.news·
Russian banks authorized to halt transfers with CBDCs for days
Hyperledger in Action: Central Bank Digital Currencies
Hyperledger in Action: Central Bank Digital Currencies
As central banks around the world have explored and researched the uses, viability, and needs for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), Hyperledger’s distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have been at the forefront of these experimentations. This ebook provides the reader an overview of the Hyperledger Foundation, why open source development is appropriate for all central bank projects and real-life examples of CBDC projects around the world.
#CBDC#Fintech#Hyperledger#DFC
·media.licdn.com·
Hyperledger in Action: Central Bank Digital Currencies
CBDC in the Market for Payments at the Point of Sale
CBDC in the Market for Payments at the Point of Sale
The Bank of Canada (BOC) published a paper that investigates the introduction of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) into the market for payments. Focusing on the point of sale (POS), it develops and estimates a structural model of consumer adoption, merchant acceptance and usage decisions. It counterfactually simulates the introduction of a CBDC, considering a version with debit-like characteristics and one encompassing the best of cash and debit, and characterize outcomes for a range of potential adoption frictions. It shows that, in the absence of adoption frictions, CBDC has the potential for material consumer adoption and merchant acceptance, along with moderate POS usage. However, modest adoption frictions substantially reduce outcomes along all three dimensions. Incumbent responses required to restore pre-CBDC market shares are moderate to small and further reduce the market penetration of CBDC. Overall, this implies that an introduction of retail CBDC into the market for payments is by no means guaranteed to be successful.
#Fintech#CBDC#Payments#Canada#DFC
·bankofcanada.ca·
CBDC in the Market for Payments at the Point of Sale