After years of research, the Bank of Canada announces it is “reducing” its work on a retail central bank digital currency.
editorial
This content was selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based on its relevance and interest to our community.
The Bank of Canada has been working with the country’s commercial lenders for several years to study the creation of a DLT-based CBDC and the impact on the economy and financial system.
During the pandemic, the bank accelerated its actions in response to Covid-19 and its impact on cash use, but still warned that a digital madman was not a “foregone conclusion”. More recently, the usefulness of a CBDC in addressing unmet payment needs in a cashless environment was questioned in a bank discussion paper.
Now it says it is downsizing the work and “shifting its focus to broader payment systems research and policy development.”
The central bank adds: “The knowledge gained over the past few years will be invaluable when Canadians, through their elected representatives, decide at some point in the future that they want or need a digital Canadian dollar.”