Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260713)

July 13, 2026July 13, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

Bolivian Government Considers including USDT as an Official Form of Payment (La Razon)

La Razon is reporting that Bolivia’s government is considering recognizing USDT as an additional settlement currency within the domestic payment system alongside the dollar and boliviano, following a 2024 Central Bank of Bolivia resolution that lifted a prior ban on crypto operations amid foreign‑exchange pressures. Authorities highlight that current usage of crypto-assets remains outside legal‑tender status and operates in a regulatory vacuum beyond the initial unblock, creating both market disruption and compliance gaps. The policy discussion is shaped by Bolivia’s placement on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “grey list,” with explicit concern that any formal integration of USDT must address anti‑money‑laundering and counter‑terrorist‑financing (AML/CFT) vulnerabilities in crypto flows. The key unresolved issue is the design of a robust regulatory framework governing crypto‑asset use in payments. [La Razon]

Stablecoins and the Future of the Dollar (Philadelphia Fed)

An article by the Philadelphia Fed’s Joseph Abadi argues that reserve‑backed stablecoins, reinforced by the GENIUS Act, will entrench the dollar and position stablecoins primarily as regulated payment instruments rather than interest‑bearing stores of value. It traces the shift from early trading‑oriented and algorithmic designs, through the Terra collapse and the Silicon Valley Bank–linked run on USD Coin, to the current dominance of transparently backed, short‑term dollar‑asset portfolios that depend on public safety nets in stress. This matters because U.S. law now treats stablecoins as fully reserved “digital cash,” channels them into settlement and remittance use, and is intended to prevent disintermediation of bank deposits, even as yield‑like products via exchanges expose a regulatory gap. The unresolved issue is whether Congress closes this “yield loophole” and how cross‑border demand interacts with capital controls. [Philadelphia Fed]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

FYI I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260712)

July 12, 2026July 12, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

U.S. Retail CBDC Ban Passed into Law Without Trump’s Signature (Congress.gov)

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a U.S. bipartisan housing law, that incidentally statutorily prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) (or “any digital asset that is substantially similar to a retail CBDC directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary”) until December 31, 2030, becoming law via constitutional default after President Trump neither signed nor vetoed the bill to protest Congressional inaction on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) that would require documented proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in U.S. federal elections. The CBDC prohibition is carefully worded to focus on retail CBDC (“widely available to the general public”) and will not “prohibit any dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless, and private, and fully preserves the privacy protections of U.S. coins and physical currency”. [Congress.gov]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260711)

July 11, 2026July 11, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

EIB Issues First DLT-native Commercial Paper on Clearstream’s D7 Platform (Clearstream)

Clearstream’s D7 distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform hosted the European Investment Bank’s (EIB’s) first natively tokenized, euro‑denominated commercial paper issuance, following recent European Central Bank (ECB) collateral eligibility decisions and within Central Securities Depositories Regulation‑compliant infrastructure. The EUR 77.5 million, 10‑day instrument was distributed into the international Eurobond market and then mobilized as Eurosystem‑eligible collateral via Clearstream’s triparty collateral management and the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) for refinancing with the Bundesbank, demonstrating end‑to‑end connectivity from primary issuance to central bank credit operations. This operationalizes tokenized short‑term securities as usable central bank collateral, advancing the practical integration of DLT into regulated European capital markets, while leaving open broader questions on scalability, interoperability across collateral pools, and long‑term treatment of DLT‑native assets in monetary and prudential frameworks. [Clearstream]

Bitcoin Market Segmentation and Regulatory Effect (BdF)

A Banque de France (BdF) working paper by Mathilde Dufouleur argues that effective, well‑designed national crypto regulation reduces Bitcoin price segmentation across jurisdictions by strengthening convergence to the U.S. dollar benchmark, with important compositional effects across regulatory types. Using a database of implemented measures in 28 countries since 2009, matched to local Bitcoin prices in 22 currencies from 2013–2024, the paper shows that the Law of One Price fails, but that higher regulatory intensity generally narrows cross‑country price gaps via lower local prices and greater integration. Reliability‑oriented frameworks—extensions of securities, banking and payment laws, regulatory sandboxes, and legalization of crypto‑related investments—are associated with both improved price convergence and, in many cases, higher local prices, whereas partial bans targeting financial institutions increase deviations and isolate markets. Financial integrity regulation lowers local prices, consistent with a meaningful share of illicit or anonymity‑driven demand, but has mixed effects on deviations, leaving open the question of how far compliance regimes alone can integrate crypto markets without broader financial‑sector participation. [BdF]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260710)

July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

SWIFT’s Blockchain Ledger for Tokenized Deposits Ready for Use (SWIFT)

SWIFT announced that its new blockchain-based shared ledger for tokenized bank deposits is ready for initial live cross-border payment pilots, positioned as an extension of its existing messaging infrastructure rather than a new settlement asset. Seventeen banks across six continents will orchestrate 24/7 movements of bank-issued tokenized deposits on their own ledgers, with final settlement still occurring through current systems, aiming to improve intraday and overnight liquidity efficiency and customer payment availability without altering underlying compliance, credit, and control frameworks. Key unresolved issues include how far this model can scale beyond deposits to broader regulated digital assets and whether interoperability across competing tokenized networks will remain under SWIFT-led governance. [SWIFT]

EU Parliament Agrees on Digital Assets Policy Stance (EU Parliament)

The European Parliament voted to adopt a position paper on how the European Union (EU) should approach crypto regulation after the rollout of its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework. The paper calls on the EU to extend its regulatory perimeter to currently under-specified activities such as decentralized finance, staking, lending, non-fungible tokens, and tokenized assets, while tightening MiCA’s implementation. It calls on the European Commission to assess whether and how these activities should be brought into MiCA or adjacent regimes, and warns that divergent national measures that could fragment the single market. The report also signals a more supportive posture toward euro-denominated stablecoins and tokenization as tools for capital-market competitiveness. Key open questions are the precise treatment of interest-bearing stablecoins and the institutional allocation of oversight for DeFi-type arrangements. [EU Parliament]

Zelle Head to India and Unveils ZelleUSD Stablecoin (EWS)

[On June 11, 2026] Early Warning Services (EWS), the network operator of Zelle, unveiled ZelleUSD (ZLUSD), its proprietary U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin. ZLUSD will support future international payment capabilities, giving U.S. consumers more opportunities to send money to family and friends around the world. EWS is owned by Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. EWS runs Zelle, a U.S.-based service that enables individuals to near instantly transfer money from their bank account to another registered user’s bank account using a mobile device or the website of a participating banking institution. Coincidentally, EWS announced that India will be the first country where U.S. consumers can use Zelle to send money to family and friends overseas. Further details on ZLUSD will be announced in the coming months. [EWS]

Digital Bonds as Collateral in Central Bank Lending (EUI)

A European University Institute (EUI) Florence School of Business and Finance paper by Long and Fisher argues that central banks should treat digital bonds that replicate conventional bond economics as eligible collateral but must adapt collateral frameworks and operations to capture benefits and manage novel risks. The authors map existing collateral policy (eligibility, haircuts, pricing, rehypothecation, pre‑positioning) and the role of central securities depositories (CSDs) and real‑time gross settlement (RTGS) in ensuring delivery‑versus‑payment (DVP) and settlement finality. They then assess how distributed ledger technology (DLT), tokenized and digitally native bonds, and sandbox regimes alter issuance, settlement, and collateral mobility, highlighting operational, legal, liquidity, and procyclicality risks that remain unresolved and require explicit policy adaptation. [EUI]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260707)

July 7, 2026July 7, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

The Shift in China’s CBDC (Digital Yuan) Policy and Key Implications (JRI)

Japan Research Institute (JRI) published a paper that analyzes China’s decision in late 2025 to shift the digital yuan (e‑CNY) from a non‑interest‑bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) to an interest‑bearing commercial bank liability integrated into reserve requirements and deposit insurance (i.e., functionally a tokenized deposit). It argues this redesign aims to align bank balance‑sheet incentives, move usage toward corporate and cross‑border payments, and better plug into the mBridge cross‑border infrastructure as part of a strategy to deepen renminbi‑denominated settlement outside the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system. Unresolved issues include whether this deposit‑based model can achieve scale amid entrenched super‑app payments, opaque mBridge usage, and continued constraints on non‑official digital currencies in China. [JRI]

Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms and Fragmentation (BIS)

The BIS published a paper by Eidan, Frost, Kansal, Lewrick, Lim and Rybarczyk that argues permissionless blockchains are structurally driven toward fragmented, specialized infrastructures rather than a unified financial market infrastructure, in the context of rising crypto and stablecoin use. The paper links heterogenous consensus mechanisms and token incentive structures to distinct equilibria across layer 1 and layer 2 networks, which fragment liquidity horizontally and vertically. It shows that mitigation tools—bridges, native multi‑chain issuance, shared middleware and interoperability protocols—reduce frictions but recreate concentrated trust, governance and operational nodes. A key unresolved issue is how to design standards and regulatory perimeters that reduce fragmentation while preserving competition and cross‑border interoperability. [BIS]

A Money View of Offline Payment Functionality (SSRN)

G+D’s Lars Hupel has updated his “money view” offline payments paper, arguing that offline-capable retail payment systems should use a single issuer, not multiple bank issuers, in the context of CBDC and fast payment system design. The paper compares central bank CBDC, a multi-issuer commercial bank token model, and a single-issuer model for offline value transfer; it finds that multi-issuer offline tokens create foreign-liability, fungibility, and counterparty-risk problems, while a single-issuer structure more closely preserves cash-like bearer behavior. The policy significance is that offline functionality can be built without a central bank-issued instrument, but only if issuance, prefunding, settlement access, and anti-money-laundering controls are centralized enough to preserve finality and risk management. [SSRN]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260706)

July 6, 2026July 7, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

ECB Publishes New Version of Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook (ECB)

The European Central Bank (ECB) published version 0.91 of the digital euro scheme rulebook. Its purpose is to provide a single set of measures, rules, and standards for the provision of digital euro payment services, and ensure a standardized digital euro payment experience across all Member States, irrespective of the country or the payment service providers (PSPs) used. It leverages, to the extent possible, on existing industry standards and procedures to improve interoperability and promote harmonization within the European payments infrastructure. [ECB]

Engaging with Privacy Stablecoins: A Framework for Scalable and KYC/AML-Compliant Adoption (BoI)

The Bank of Italy (BoI) Financial Intelligence Unit published a paper that examines the potential of privacy-preserving stablecoins (“privacy stablecoins”) as retail payment instruments. It argues that stablecoins currently operating on public Layer-1 blockchains face structural limitations in terms of scalability, regulatory compliance, and privacy protection. Privacy-enhancing Layer-2 architectures may help overcome these constraints by combining greater operational efficiency with mechanisms that reconcile user confidentiality and regulatory oversight. The paper proposes a framework that relies on rollup‑based Layer‑2 designs with validity‑proof systems, data‑availability guarantees, and rule‑based selective disclosure to reconcile privacy with auditable reserves and enforceable financial integrity. [BoI]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260704)

July 4, 2026July 4, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

Bank of Russia Announces Banks’ Readiness for Digital Ruble Widespread Use (Tass)

Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina reported that banks and major retailers are technically ready to support broad use of the digital ruble central bank digital currency (CBDC). Preparatory work has focused on integrating systemically important banks and large merchants into the acceptance infrastructure and on developing functionality such as smart contracts and the option to host digital ruble wallets on commercial bank balance sheets rather than solely on the central bank balance sheet. Major banks will be required to allow their clients to transact with digital rubles starting on September 1, 2026. [Tass]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260703)

July 3, 2026July 3, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

Tokenization at Investment Banks Survey 2026 Final Report (SODA)

Tokenization at large investment banks is advancing but remains economically and infrastructurally immature, according to a SODA survey of sixteen of the world’s largest investment banks. Activity is clustered in tokenized money, collateral mobility and intraday repo, where links to liquidity, balance‑sheet efficiency and settlement are most concrete, with capital markets issuance, custody, funds and secondary trading treated largely as dependent layers. Most initiatives stall at proof‑of‑concept or pre‑production, reflecting private‑network architectures, unresolved legal and prudential treatment, duplicated off‑chain records, weak 24/7 operational readiness, and the absence of a convergent settlement model. Banks see plausible upside in liquidity coverage ratio and collateral velocity, but benefits are mostly unrealized, funding models are fragmented between business lines and central functions, client willingness to pay is limited, and return‑on‑investment logics remain institution‑specific rather than industry‑wide. Overall, the survey results indicate that tokenization will only become transformative if it can prove hard financial benefits, overcome legal and infrastructure barriers, and move from fragmented pilots into bank-backed, scalable production. [SODA]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (20260702)

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

A Unified Ledger in Practice: Lessons from Project Hangang (BoK)

Bank of Korea (BoK) Governor Hyun Song Shin presented a paper outlining the experiences and implications of “Project Hangang” at the ECB Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal. The paper argues that Hangang shows a unified ledger can implement tokenized reserves and deposits at scale while preserving a two‑tier monetary system and singleness of money, but only via specific architectural choices and unresolved institutional reforms. The project runs a permissioned digital currency system with wholesale central bank money natively issued on-ledger, burn‑and‑issue interbank transfers, and a strict separation of fungible currency tokens from a programmable voucher layer. Phase I demonstrated live retail and programmable public‑voucher use cases for around 80,000 users, but with crude, offline reconciliation to BOK‑Wire+ and pre‑funded liquidity. Phase II scales to ongoing operation and fiscal disbursements, while future work centers on tokenized government bonds, 24/7 intraday liquidity and cross‑border linkage via Project Agorá, contingent on clarifying the legal status of wholesale claims and the integrated liquidity framework. [ECB]

Financial Market Infrastructures Evolution in a Tokenized Economy (IMF)

The IMF published a paper by Cabedo, Mancini-Griffoli, Schar and Zhang that argues tokenization will reconfigure, rather than eliminate, financial market infrastructures by shifting deterministic lifecycle functions into smart contracts while preserving institutional responsibility for governance, legal certainty, and discretionary risk management. The paper maps issuance, clearing, settlement, and reporting onto single, common, and compatible ledger architectures, showing where atomic on‑chain execution can replace current post‑trade processes and where off‑chain or multi‑ledger coordination still dominates. It highlights new risks—smart‑contract design failures, oracle and bridge dependencies, governance concentration, and privacy trade‑offs—alongside persistent needs for central counterparties, depositories, and trade repositories to manage defaults, loss mutualization, finality, and supervisory access. The central unresolved issue is how law and regulation will define authoritative ledgers, recognize blockchain settlement, and specify accountable entities in hybrid FMI models. [IMF]

Jurisdictions Where Retail CBDC Is Being Explored

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026 ~ kiffmeister ~ Leave a comment

I’ve updated my tabulation of the central banks that have launched, piloted, experimented with and/or researched retail central bank digital currency (CBDC)(see below). The table was compiled from publicly available sources, including media and central bank websites, and not verified through official channels. If I’m missing anything, or you find mistakes in the tabulation, please let me know in the comments!

According to my count, 115 central banks have launched retail CBDC explorations based on publicly-available information. It doesn’t include the two that started issuing retail CBDC and then shut the platforms down (Ecuador and Finland). Four jurisdictions have seen full launches (Bahamas, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Nigeria), 13 pilot launches (where the central bank is/was issuing real CBDC to a limited subset of external users), 23 have seen proof-of-concept work started, and 75 started and remain in the pure research phase. These are less than the numbers published by the Atlantic Council, because they count individual countries in currency zones (e.g., Eurozone). BTW for those who want a more historical view of CBDC developments I strongly recommend the CBDCTracker.org database.

The table below also indicates in green which 29 projects are truly “live” where “live” is defined as those that are currently in active launch (3), pilot (5) or proof-of-concept (8) phases, plus others that have published research updates during the last 12 months (13).

Notes: The difference between a “pilot” and “proof of concept” (POC) is that a pilot involves actual users, whereas a POC does not, even though some POCs may involve central bank staff. Also, because the tabulation is based only on publicly-available information, it is likely that there is some POC activity in the “research” category, but no announcements have been made. Finally, entries that are crossed through indicate that the projects have been shut down, or put on hold (“watchful waiting”).

BTW I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.

Jurisdictions Where Retail CBDC Is Being Explored Download