Bank of England seeks feedback for wholesale CBDC trials (Ledger Insights)

The Bank of England (BOE) published a discussion paper on innovation in money and payments. While it covers payments across the board, it aims to gather feedback for planned wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) trials. These will include a synchronization (“trigger”) solution that settles transactions involving assets that are tokenized on distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms using the real time gross settlement (RTGS) system. The BOE also wants to trial a digital securities transaction in which an end user makes a tokenized deposit payment. Finally, it will test interoperability with global initiatives like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Project Agorá for cross-border payments. Comments are due by October 31, 2024. [Read more at the BOE]

Qatar Central Bank launches ‘Request to Pay’ service through Fawran (The Peninsula)

Qatar Central Bank (QCB) launched a “Request to Pay” option through Fawran instant payment service that was launched in March 2024. Request to Pay allows customers to send a payment request from the payee to the payer. The payer will then receive the request, including the payee’s name, the required amount to be transferred and the option to accept or reject the request. In case of acceptance, the required amount will be transferred instantly to the payee’s account. The participating banks are Doha Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, Commercial Bank, Masraf Al Rayan and Qatar International Islamic Bank. [Read more on the QCB’s X page]

E-Rupee retail CBDC pilot customers grow 285% year-over-year (Business Standard)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published its annual report on currency and Finance in which it reported that as of June 2024, 5 million users (versus 1.3 million a year earlier) and 0.4 million merchants (versus 0.3 million) were participating in e-Rupee CBDC retail pilot. [Read the full report at the RBI]

Byzantine fault tolerant consensus with confidential quorum certificate for a central bank DLT (Banca D’Italia)

Banca d’Italia published a paper on the FROSTed Byzantine Fault Tolerance (FBFT) protocol, an approach to DLT proof of authority (PoA) validation meant to strengthen the security of the ledger, its tolerance to faults or attacks, and the confidentiality of validators. It combines the practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm with the flexible round-optimized Schnorr threshold (FROST) signature scheme. The resulting system is an alternative platform for a distributed, resilient transactional system. Operated by a set of trusted actors, distributed at geographic scale, it holds potential for mission-critical applications, such as wholesale and retail CBDC, and asset tokenization schemes. [Read more at Banca d’Italia]

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And just a reminder that I produce a monthly digest of central bank digital currency (CBDC) developments exclusively for the official sector. So (only) if you work at a central bank, ministry of finance or international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank) and who would like to receive it by email on the first business day of every month, please DM me on LinkedIn or email me at john@kiffmeister.com.