There are a number of central bank digital currency (CBDC) trackers that provide accurate snapshots of the CBDC state of play at any point in time, like those of the Atlantic Council and Human Rights Foundation (HRF). However, as far as I know, only CBDCTracker.org also maintains a historical database of CBDC developments that it makes available to researchers. Although I’m part of the CBDCTracker.org team, I haven’t actually done anything interesting with the database until now. So here it goes.
I have long been using Figure 1 to illustrate the growth in central banks starting to explore retail CBDC.[1] The number has grown from five in 2015 to the current 117. The other trackers publish higher counts (over 130) but that’s because they count the individual countries in currency unions separately. So, for example, I count the Euro Area as one, but the Atlantic Council counts nine of the Euro Area countries separately, and the HRF counts all of them (actually 20 because they’re not yet tracking Bulgaria). My rationale for not counting the individual countries is that only the currency union’s central bank (e.g., the ECB in the case of the Euro Area) can issue the CBDC (e.g., digital euro).[2]
However, Figure 1 is based on a cumulative count that doesn’t account for central banks canceling or fizzling out their CBDC projects. In many cases the central bank makes a public announcement that it is ceasing or putting on hold its retail CBDC project (e.g., Australia, Brazil, Canada, Norway, Sweden and United States). More recently, some central banks have been pivoting out of retail CBDC into wholesale CBDC-backed tokenized deposits (e.g., China and South Korea). And then there are the quiet quitters, many of whom never got out of the research or proof-of-concept phases.
Anyways, the CBDCTracker.org database provides all of the information required to identify the central banks that have publicly shut down their retail CBDC projects, and those who have let their projects fizzle out quietly. The result of that is Figure 2, which classifies projects that are “live” as the ones that are currently launched or being actively piloted, plus, of the rest, the ones who have provided public evidence that their projects are still live within the last 12 months of the period in question. At March-end 2026, there were 34 live efforts – four that have launched, four active pilots, nine in active proof-of-concept phases, and 17 research projects for which public updates had been made since March 2025.
This seems to fly in the face of headlines, like those claiming that a clear majority of central banks see CBDC adoption in 5-10 years (Central Banking, 2026). I have a suspicion that such headline claims include the currency union double counting I mentioned above, plus wholesale CBDC (or “tokenized central bank money”) projects, which do seem to have a promising future. I suspect that if I were to recreate Figure 2 for wholesale CBDC, the numbers wouldn’t be as high, but the “live” numbers wouldn’t be far below the totals.
Meanwhile, in a follow-up post I’ll go through the reasons I think that retail CBDC projects seem to be fizzling out and give my suggestions for a possibly brighter future. Meanwhile, as a teaser, take a look at Figure 3 that shows fully launched fast payment systems…
[1] Retail CBDC is a broadly available general purpose digital payment instrument, denominated in the jurisdiction’s unit of account, that’s a direct liability of the monetary authority. Wholesale CBDC is limited to a set of predefined user groups, like financial institutions, based on distributed ledger technology.
[2] I’m not saying that the Atlantic Council or HRF are necessarily wrong, because they may have their reasons for focusing on individual countries, like geopolitical and human rights angles, which may be country specific.
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.
