What Is a CBDC? Central Bank Digital Currencies in 2026 — Complete Guide

TL;DR

• A CBDC (central bank digital currency) is a digital form of a country's official money issued directly by the central bank — a direct claim on the state, not on a commercial bank or a private stablecoin issuer.
• As of April 2026 the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker counts 134 countries (≈98 % of global GDP) exploring CBDCs, 49 active pilots, and 3 fully launched retail CBDCs (Bahamas Sand Dollar, Jamaica JAM-DEX, Nigeria eNaira). China's e-CNY remains the largest pilot, with $2.3 trillion cumulative transaction value.
• The digital euro is in advanced preparation after the ECB closed its preparation phase in October 2025; issuance is targeted for 2029. The digital pound, digital yen and digital rupee are mid-pilot. The United States banned its own CBDC by executive order on 23 January 2025.
• Wholesale and cross-border projects led by the BIS Innovation Hub — Helvetia, Jura, Mariana, Agorá, Tourbillon, mBridge, Polaris, Atom, Atlas — are quietly producing the technical blueprints that will define the next-generation monetary system, regardless of whether retail CBDCs ever go mainstream in the West.

Table of contents

• What is a CBDC?
• Retail vs wholesale CBDC
• Why central banks are building CBDCs
• Live retail CBDCs in 2026
• Late-stage pilot retail CBDCs
• Wholesale CBDC projects (BIS Innovation Hub)
• Cross-border CBDC projects
• Project mBridge: the geopolitics deep dive
• The technology stack: who builds CBDCs
• The US position: from FedNow to the Trump ban
• Diem / Libra: the catalyst that broke
• CBDC vs stablecoin vs tokenized deposit
• The privacy debate
• Risks and criticisms
• Major reports and research to read
• The 2026 outlook
• FAQ
• Glossary
• Sources and further reading

What is a CBDC? (definition)

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a digital form of a country's official sovereign money, issued and guaranteed by the central bank, denominated in the national unit of account, and legally equivalent to physical cash. It is the third form of central-bank money, after physical banknotes (held by anyone) and central-bank reserves (held only by commercial banks).

A CBDC differs from money on your bank app today in a subtle but profound way. The euros, dollars or pounds in your checking account are commercial-bank money — an IOU from your bank, protected only up to the deposit-insurance ceiling (€100,000 in the EU, $250,000 in the US). A CBDC is a direct liability of the central bank itself. It is also distinct from a stablecoin like USDC or USDT (a private liability of an issuer) and from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum (no issuer at all).

The phrase "CBDC" entered the central-banking lexicon around 2015-2017, although Nobel laureate James Tobin proposed something similar in 1985. The trigger for the 2020s wave was the rise of private digital money — stablecoins, Bitcoin, and especially Facebook's Diem/Libra in 2019 — combined with the COVID-era acceleration in cashless payments.

Retail vs wholesale CBDC

Every CBDC project sits on a fundamental design fork.

A retail CBDC (rCBDC) is digital cash for households and businesses. You hold it in a wallet — typically a mobile app issued either directly by the central bank or by a regulated commercial-bank distributor in a "two-tier" model. You spend it at merchants, between friends, online, and ideally offline. Examples: the Bahamas Sand Dollar, the Nigeria eNaira, the China e-CNY, the planned digital euro and the digital pound.

A wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) is restricted to financial institutions — banks, broker-dealers, central counterparties — for settling interbank transfers, repo, foreign-exchange and securities transactions on a tokenized ledger. The general public has no direct access. Examples: Project Helvetia (Switzerland), Project Jura (France-Switzerland), Project Mariana, and Project Agorá (seven major central banks).

The political stakes differ wildly. Retail CBDCs touch every citizen — they raise privacy, surveillance, financial-inclusion and bank-disintermediation concerns. Wholesale CBDCs are mostly invisible to the public; they upgrade the plumbing of correspondent banking. That asymmetry explains why the United States banned retail CBDCs in 2025 but the New York Fed continues to participate in wholesale projects like Project Cedar and Project Agorá.

A third category — the hybrid CBDC or "synthetic CBDC" — would have private issuers (like stablecoin issuers or commercial banks) issue tokens fully backed by central-bank reserves. This is the design space Project Agorá is exploring with tokenized commercial-bank deposits.

Why central banks are building CBDCs

Central bankers cite five overlapping motivations:

1. Maintain the role of public money. As cash use declines (sub-10 % of payments in Sweden, Norway, China), the public's everyday access to central-bank money risks disappearing. Cited as motivation #1 by the Riksbank, Norges Bank and ECB.
2. Payments efficiency. Instant settlement at near-zero cost in domestic and cross-border corridors.
3. Financial inclusion. Roughly 1.4 billion adults remain unbanked. The dominant rationale for Sand Dollar, eNaira, JAM-DEX and Drex.
4. Monetary sovereignty. Russia, China and several EM central banks see CBDCs as a hedge against dollar stablecoins and a tool of geopolitical autonomy.
5. Programmability. Smart-contract-style payments — escrow, conditional welfare, automated tax. Also the most controversial feature: programmability is power.

Live retail CBDCs in 2026

Three retail CBDCs are fully launched and operational; a fourth (DCash) is partially active.

Bahamas Sand Dollar — the world's first. Launched 20 October 2020, the Sand Dollar issued by the Central Bank of The Bahamas was the first retail CBDC ever to go live nationwide. Tiered KYC; technology provided by NZIA Limited with Bitt as wallet provider. Adoption remains modest — circulation below 0.5 % of B$.

Nigeria eNaira — the most populous launch. Launched 25 October 2021 by the Central Bank of Nigeria under Governor Godwin Emefiele on Bitt technology, eNaira was the first African retail CBDC. The IMF's 2023 Article IV consultation concluded it had "disappointingly low adoption" — under 1 % of Nigerians use it actively.

Jamaica JAM-DEX. Launched July 2022 by the Bank of Jamaica on eCurrency Mint Ltd technology, JAM-DEX onboarded ~200,000 users in year one with a J$2,500 incentive. Merchant acceptance is the bottleneck.

Eastern Caribbean DCash. Launched March 2021 by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank across eight ECCU member states on Bitt and Hyperledger Fabric, DCash is best known for a two-month outage in early 2022 caused by an expired certificate. The ECCB's 2024 review concluded more work is needed before full production.

China e-CNY — the largest pilot in the world. Although the PBOC has not formally declared the e-CNY "launched", it is the world's largest live CBDC by every measurable yardstick. Pilots began April 2020 in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong'an, expanded for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, then rolled out to 26+ cities. By end of November 2025, e-CNY had processed 3.4 billion transactions worth RMB 16.7 trillion (~US $2.3 trillion), an 800 %+ increase since 2023. Hong Kong cross-border use surged over 300 % in Q3 2025 as Circle K and FreshUp vending-machine networks began accepting it.

Late-stage pilot retail CBDCs

Several major economies are deep into formal pilots that could become full launches between 2026 and 2030.

Digital euro

The digital euro is the ECB's planned retail CBDC for the euro area, championed by President Christine Lagarde and former Executive Board member Fabio Panetta. Timeline:

• Oct 2021 – Oct 2023: Investigation phase, concluded a digital euro is desirable.
• Nov 2023 – Oct 2025: Preparation phase. ECB selected tech providers (Worldline, CaixaBank, Feedzai, Giesecke+Devrient, Almaviva; AWS for hosting) in Jan 2024 and finalised a draft rulebook.
• 30 Oct 2025: Governing Council closed the preparation phase, opened a new stage focused on technical readiness and EU legislation.
• Target 2026: EU co-legislators adopt the digital-euro Regulation.
• Mid-2027: Pilot transactions, contingent on legislation.
• 2029: Possible issuance.

Design features include a holding limit (rumoured €3-5k per user) to prevent bank-deposit flight, offline mode using secure-element chips for cash-like privacy, and the two-tier model with commercial-bank intermediation.

Digital pound ("Britcoin")

The Bank of England and HM Treasury opened the digital pound design phase in February 2023. As of April 2026 it remains in design with a 2026 build-or-not decision pending; BOE has signalled "more likely than not".

Digital rupee, ruble, Drex, yen, eHKD

The Reserve Bank of India launched the wholesale digital rupee pilot Nov 2022 and the retail pilot Dec 2022, reaching ~5 M users with UPI integration. The Bank of Russia's digital ruble ran a 12-bank pilot 2023-2024; nationwide rollout is targeted for 2026. The Banco Central do Brasil's Drex, launched March 2023 on Hyperledger Besu, is a hybrid wholesale-retail design exchanging tokenized commercial-bank deposits against wholesale Drex; Phase 2 ran through 2025. The Bank of Japan is in Phase 3 of digital yen experiments. The HKMA ran eHKD Phase 1 in 2023, Phase 2 in 2024-2025.

Wholesale CBDC projects (BIS Innovation Hub)

The BIS Innovation Hub, opened in 2019 across centres in Basel, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Toronto and the Eurosystem, has become the de-facto R&D arm of global wholesale-CBDC research.

Project Helvetia — Swiss National Bank's flagship, run with the BIS Swiss Centre and SIX Digital Exchange (SDX). Helvetia III (Dec 2023) issued real, live wholesale Swiss-franc CBDC on SDX for atomic settlement of bond issuances; SNB extended the pilot to 2026 — the longest-running live wholesale CBDC in production.

Project Jura (2021) — Banque de France, SNB and BIS demonstrated cross-border settlement between digital euro and digital franc, the first cross-border wholesale-CBDC PvP experiment.

Project Mariana (Nov 2023) — BdF, SNB and MAS tested FX between three wholesale CBDCs using an automated market maker on a public-permissioned chain, borrowing mechanics from Uniswap v2/v3 and Curve — the first central-bank deployment of AMM technology.

Project Agorá (Apr 2024) — the BIS Innovation Hub's most ambitious initiative. Seven central banks (BdF for the Eurosystem, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, SNB, BOE, NY Fed) plus 40+ private banks (JPMorgan, HSBC, BBVA, Citi) integrating tokenized commercial-bank deposits with wholesale CBDC on a programmable core platform. Final report due H1 2026.

Project Tourbillon (Nov 2023, BIS Swiss Centre + SNB) — prototyped cash-like privacy via David Chaum-style blind signatures: payer anonymous, payee identified. Now the canonical reference for privacy-preserving retail CBDC.

Project Polaris (BIS Nordic) — multi-year programme on offline retail-CBDC payments and cyber-resilience.

Project Atom (Reserve Bank of Australia + BIS) — wholesale CBDC for syndicated lending; follow-on eAUD pilot tested 16 industry use cases in 2023-2024.

Project Atlas (2023, BIS + DNB + Bundesbank + BdF) — public dashboards combining on-chain and CEX-flow data for systemic-risk monitoring.

Cross-border CBDC projects

Cross-border payments are CBDC's most economically important use case — the corridor where the gap between blockchain-native rails and the SWIFT-correspondent-banking world is largest.

Project mBridge — see the geopolitics deep dive below.

Project Dunbar (2021-2022) — BIS, MAS, South African Reserve Bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia and Bank Negara Malaysia tested multi-CBDC platforms for cross-border wholesale settlement, pioneering the "common platform" concept later inherited by mBridge and Agorá.

Project Inthanon-LionRock (2018-2020), HKMA + BOT — the direct technical predecessor of mBridge.

Project Sela (Sept 2023, BIS Hong Kong + HKMA + Bank of Israel) — demonstrated a retail CBDC can be cash-like and accessible without the central bank running the payment infrastructure.

Project Icebreaker (Mar 2023, BIS Nordic + Riksbank + Norges Bank + Bank of Israel) — tested a "hub-and-spoke" cross-border model. Conceptual cousin of Project Nexus (fast-payment systems).

Project Aber (2019-2020, Saudi Central Bank + CBUAE) — early cross-border wholesale CBDC; laid foundations for mBridge.

Project mBridge: the geopolitics deep dive

Of all CBDC initiatives, Project mBridge carries the largest geopolitical ramifications.

• Non-Western founding cohort. mBridge's founders (HKMA, PBOC, BOT, CBUAE) sit at the Belt-and-Road / Gulf intersection. Saudi Arabia joined as a fifth founding member in June 2024, days before MVP.
• Real CBDC payments at MVP (5 June 2024). Live interbank transfers in four CBDCs (e-CNY, e-HKD, digital baht, digital dirham) settling in seconds without correspondent banks.
• BIS exit, 31 October 2024. BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens called the move a "graduation". Reuters and CoinDesk reported that US sanctions-evasion concerns contributed to the decision.
• e-CNY dominance. Cumulative settlement reportedly reached ~$55 billion by late 2025, with e-CNY at over 95 %. Effectively a digital-yuan settlement rail for the Gulf-China corridor.
• Future trajectory. China has signalled intent to push mBridge to production. Russia and Iran are speculated as future joiners.

mBridge represents the first credible non-dollar, non-SWIFT cross-border settlement infrastructure at meaningful scale — the embryo of what some analysts call a "BRICS payment system".

The technology stack: who builds CBDCs

Real CBDCs run on real software, and the vendor landscape is concentrated.

• ConsenSys / Quorum — Helvetia I, eAUD, Eurosystem experiments.
• R3 Corda — Inthanon-LionRock, Jasper; strong across Asian central banks.
• IBM Hyperledger Fabric — DCash (the 2022 outage source), Sand Dollar's NZIA platform, Khokha I.
• Hyperledger Besu — Brazil's Drex.
• Bitt — Caribbean fintech behind DCash, eNaira and ECCB pilot work.
• NZIA Limited — Sand Dollar core platform. eCurrency Mint Ltd — JAM-DEX.
• Giesecke+Devrient (G+D Filia) — selected by ECB for digital-euro offline component.
• Worldline, CaixaBank, Feedzai, Almaviva — selected by ECB Jan 2024 for digital-euro online tracks. Amazon Web Services — selected to host digital-euro infrastructure.
• Ripple — CBDC pilots with Palau, Bhutan, Montenegro, Colombia and Georgia on the XRPL.
• nChain — Bitcoin-SV-affiliated CBDC research in several emerging markets.

The US position: from FedNow to the Trump ban

The US CBDC stance has evolved more sharply than any other major economy.

2020-2022: Boston Fed + MIT Digital Currency Initiative ran Project Hamilton, the most rigorous open-source retail-CBDC technical study. In Jan 2022 the Federal Reserve Board published "Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation".

2023: Lael Brainard, then Fed Vice Chair, was the most prominent CBDC-curious senior official until her Feb 2023 departure. Christopher Waller, Fed Governor, gave the canonical "no" speech ("CBDC: A Solution in Search of a Problem?", 2021).

20 July 2023: FedNow launched. FedNow is not a CBDC — it is a 24/7 instant-payment rail on which commercial-bank deposits transfer. The dollars on it are still bank IOUs.

2023-2024: Whip Tom Emmer introduced the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

23 January 2025: President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14178, "Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology". Section 4 prohibits any federal agency from establishing, issuing, circulating or using a CBDC in the US or abroad, and orders immediate termination of ongoing federal CBDC work. The EO embraced dollar-denominated stablecoins instead. Senator Mike Lee and Rep. Tom Emmer have since introduced bills to codify the ban as statute.

Outcome: a US retail CBDC is effectively dead until at least 2029. The New York Fed continues to participate in wholesale projects (Cedar, Agorá) outside the EO's scope.

Diem / Libra: the catalyst that broke

It is impossible to write a credible CBDC history without Diem (formerly Libra). Announced by Facebook (now Meta) in June 2019, Libra proposed a private global stablecoin backed by a basket of fiat reserves, run by the Libra Association from Geneva. It detonated a central-banking panic — within weeks the G7 and FSB commissioned working groups, the BIS Innovation Hub accelerated its CBDC programme, and the ECB jump-started the digital-euro investigation phase. Libra was redesigned as Diem in 2020, then liquidated in January 2022 when Silvergate Bank acquired the residual technology. Diem never processed a single transaction, yet arguably remains the most influential project in CBDC history — every major retail CBDC alive today was directly motivated or accelerated by it.

CBDC vs stablecoin vs tokenized deposit

The single most useful mental model for the digital-money landscape:

Takeaway: stablecoins are the only digital money that scaled in 2024-2026 ($250 B+ supply); CBDCs reached only $5-20 B retail (mostly e-CNY) and several hundred billion in wholesale (Helvetia III + mBridge + Agorá). Stablecoins won round one; CBDCs and tokenized deposits are positioning for round two via interoperability.

The privacy debate

No question dominates retail-CBDC public discourse like privacy. The technical literature has converged on three broad design archetypes:

1. Account-based, fully traceable. Every transaction is visible to the central bank. This is the e-CNY baseline (with controlled anonymity for low-value tiers).
2. Token-based, controlled privacy. Cash-like for low values, KYC for high values. The digital euro falls here, with anonymity vouchers for offline payments.
3. Cryptographic privacy. Blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs make payer fully anonymous to the central bank while still preserving AML at the receiver. This is what Project Tourbillon prototyped.

The criticism, articulated most sharply by Cato Institute's Norbert Michel, the Human Rights Foundation, and Senator Ted Cruz, is that no design fully constrains future expansion. A privacy-preserving CBDC issued today can be made surveilling tomorrow with a software upgrade. The hard line is therefore drawn at issuance itself — which is precisely the position the Trump administration adopted.

Risks and criticisms

• Bank disintermediation / deposit flight. Unconstrained retail CBDCs could accelerate bank runs; holding limits (ECB's €3-5k cap, e-CNY tier limits) are the standard mitigation.
• Surveillance and programmability misuse. Authoritarian regimes could use CBDC for social-credit-style controls. China's e-CNY has built-in expiry functionality used in lottery promotions.
• Cyberattack and operational risk. The DCash 2022 two-month outage and intermittent ECCB issues are the canonical cautionary tales. Project Polaris addresses cyber-resilience.
• Geopolitical fragmentation. mBridge and alternative rails could split the global payments graph along bloc lines — a concern now central to G7 and IMF agendas.
• Adoption failure. eNaira (<1 %) and Sand Dollar (<0.5 %) demonstrate that "build it and they will come" is wrong without merchant-side incentives.
• Cost vs benefit. A 2024 BCG study estimated full digital-euro rollout at €1-2 billion. Critics ask whether the spend solves any problem stablecoins and fast-payment systems haven't already.

Major reports and research to read

Canonical primary sources:

• BIS Annual Economic Report 2025, Ch. III "The next-generation monetary and financial system" — best executive overview.
• BIS WP 880 (Auer, Frost) "Rise of the central bank digital currencies".
• BIS WP 887 "CBDC: motives, economic implications and the research frontier".
• BIS WP 941 "CBDCs: a new tool in the financial inclusion toolkit?".
• BIS / SNB Project Tourbillon report (Nov 2023).
• BIS Project mBridge MVP report (June 2024).
• BIS Project Agorá FAQ (April 2024).
• BIS Project Helvetia III update.
• BIS Project Mariana final report.
• ECB digital-euro preparation-phase closing report (Oct 2025).
• ECB Occasional Paper 286 on CBDC and bank disintermediation.
• IMF Fintech Note 2024/011 "Central Bank Exploration of Tokenized Reserves".
• IMF Virtual Handbook on CBDC.
• Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker (2026 update).
• Federal Reserve "Money and Payments" Discussion Paper (Jan 2022).

The 2026 outlook

What to watch through 2026 and into 2027:

1. Digital-euro Regulation vote in the EU. If co-legislators ratify in 2026, mid-2027 pilot transactions follow. If not, the project slides to 2030+.
2. Project Agorá final report (H1 2026) — the year's most important wholesale-CBDC document, defining the design pattern for tokenized-deposit + wCBDC integration across seven currencies.
3. mBridge production roadmap. Watch whether governance formalises among the five member central banks and whether new entrants (Russia? Iran? Indonesia?) join.
4. e-CNY beyond pilot. A formal "launch" announcement, or a major Hong Kong cross-border production deployment, would be a turning point.
5. Digital pound build decision. BOE has signalled a 2026 yes/no.
6. CBDC-stablecoin-tokenized-deposit interop. Beyond Agorá, watch Project Guardian (MAS) and Project Mandala (BIS).
7. The US position. A CBDC ban by EO is fragile — reversible by a future president. The 2026-2028 window is the political contest over codifying the ban as statute.

Through 2026, the realistic scenario is that wholesale CBDCs quietly become production infrastructure in Switzerland, the Eurozone wholesale market, parts of Asia and on mBridge, while retail CBDCs remain a slow-burn experiment in most Western democracies. Stablecoins continue to dominate cross-border digital-dollar flows. "Digital cash for everyone" is still a 2027-2030 story at best.

FAQ

What is a CBDC in simple terms?

A CBDC is a digital form of a country's official money issued directly by the central bank — a direct claim on the state, the same legal status as a physical banknote. CBDCs come in retail (public) and wholesale (banks-only) variants.

What is the difference between a CBDC and a stablecoin?

A CBDC is sovereign money issued by a central bank. A stablecoin like USDC or USDT is private money issued by a company that promises one-to-one fiat redemption from a reserve. Stablecoins carry issuer risk; CBDCs carry only sovereign risk.

Which countries have a live CBDC right now?

Three are fully launched: Bahamas Sand Dollar (Oct 2020), Jamaica JAM-DEX (2022) and Nigeria eNaira (2021). DCash is partially live. Forty-nine countries run pilots, including China e-CNY, digital rupee, digital ruble and Drex.

When will the digital euro launch?

After the ECB's preparation phase closed in October 2025, if the EU adopts the digital-euro Regulation in 2026, a digital euro pilot could run from mid-2027 and issuance could occur in 2029.

What is the digital yuan (e-CNY)?

The e-CNY is the PBOC's retail CBDC. By November 2025 it had processed 3.4 billion transactions worth ~$2.3 trillion — the world's largest live CBDC.

What is Project mBridge?

Project mBridge is a multi-CBDC cross-border platform between HKMA, PBOC, BOT, CBUAE and Saudi Arabia. It reached MVP on 5 June 2024; the BIS exited on 31 October 2024. Cumulative volume reached ~$55 billion by late 2025, with e-CNY at >95%.

Why did Donald Trump ban a US CBDC?

On 23 January 2025, Trump signed EO 14178 prohibiting any federal agency from establishing or issuing a CBDC, citing privacy and financial-stability risks. The administration favours dollar-denominated stablecoins instead.

Are CBDCs a privacy threat?

They can be, depending on design. Project Tourbillon prototyped cash-like privacy; the digital euro includes anonymity vouchers; e-CNY uses tiered KYC. Critics argue no design fully prevents future surveillance creep.

Wholesale vs retail CBDC?

Retail CBDC is digital cash for the public. Wholesale CBDC is restricted to banks for interbank settlement (Helvetia, Jura, Mariana, Agorá).

Will FedNow become a US digital dollar?

No. FedNow is a 24/7 instant-payment rail; the dollars on it are still commercial-bank deposits. After Trump's 2025 EO, no US CBDC work is permitted.

Glossary

• CBDC — Central bank digital currency. Digital form of sovereign money issued by a central bank.
• Retail CBDC (rCBDC) — CBDC accessible by the general public for everyday payments.
• Wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) — CBDC restricted to financial institutions for interbank settlement.
• Two-tier model — Architecture in which the central bank issues CBDC to authorised commercial-bank distributors, who in turn distribute to end users.
• DLT (distributed ledger technology) — Umbrella term covering both public blockchains and permissioned ledgers; the underlying tech for most CBDC designs.
• Tokenized deposit — A commercial-bank deposit represented as a transferable token, e.g. JPM Coin.
• Stablecoin — Privately issued digital token pegged to a fiat currency, backed by reserves.
• PvP (payment-versus-payment) — Settlement mechanism in which two currency legs of an FX trade settle simultaneously and atomically.
• DvP (delivery-versus-payment) — Same idea but for securities-vs-cash settlement.
• Atomic settlement — All legs of a transaction either complete together or not at all.
• Anonymity voucher — A cryptographic token that grants the bearer the right to make a low-value private payment, used in the digital-euro offline design.
• Holding limit — Maximum balance of CBDC a single user may hold, used to prevent bank-deposit flight.
• Programmable money — Money whose use can be conditioned by smart-contract logic.
• AMM (automated market maker) — DeFi pricing mechanism deployed in Project Mariana for FX between three CBDCs.
• MVP (minimum viable product) — Stage at which mBridge launched real cross-border payments on 5 June 2024.

Related reading (internal links)

• Stablecoins explained: USDC, USDT, MiCA and the GENIUS Act in 2026
• Tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) — 2026 guide
• Cross-border payments and blockchain in 2026
• The digital euro explained
• The digital yuan (e-CNY) explained
• Project mBridge: the multi-CBDC bridge explained
• CBDC vs stablecoin: the long form comparison
• The BIS Innovation Hub project portfolio

Sources and further reading

Primary sources (.org / .gov / central-bank publications):

• BIS Innovation Hub — CBDC topic page
• BIS — Project mBridge page
• BIS Annual Economic Report 2025, Chapter III
• BIS press release: Project Agorá launch (3 Apr 2024)
• BIS Working Paper 880
• ECB — digital euro programme
• ECB — preparation phase closing report (Oct 2025)
• ECB — digital euro progress page
• Council of the EU — digital euro file
• Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker (2026)
• CBDC Tracker (cbdctracker.org)
• IMF — Central Bank Digital Currency topic page
• Federal Reserve — CBDC topic page
• Bank of England — digital pound
• HM Treasury — digital pound consultation
• Bank of Canada — digital dollar
• Bank of Japan — digital yen
• Reserve Bank of India — digital rupee
• Banco Central do Brasil — Drex
• Central Bank of Nigeria — eNaira design paper
• Sand Dollar (Bahamas) official site
• ECCB DCash project page
• Bank of Jamaica — JAM-DEX brochure
• White House Fact Sheet — EO on Digital Financial Technology (23 Jan 2025)
• FSB — cross-border stablecoin oversight programme

About the author

Maintained by DeFi Intel Research, an independent crypto research desk based in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, focused on CBDC, MEV, stablecoin regulation and tokenized financial-market infrastructure. We track every CBDC pilot, BIS Innovation Hub project and major regulatory action in real time. We hold no positions in any token, stablecoin issuer or CBDC tech vendor mentioned. Editorial independence: /about. Tip line: research@ggcypher.io.

Last updated: 2026-04-26