Which jurisdictions head up the retail central bank digital currency league table?

Authors: Jonas Gross, John Kiff

While much attention is focused on the retail central bank digital currency (rCBDC) ruminations of China, Europe and the United States, aside from China, smaller jurisdictions are actually leading the way. Although the People’s Bank of China launched their rCBDC pilot in April 2020, Banco Central del Uruguay completed its first pilot already in April 2018, the Central Bank of the Bahamas fully launched their Sand Dollar in October 2020, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank launched a pilot in March 2021. In this post, we take a deep dive into these leading rCBDC efforts.

Overview and overall retail CBDC landscape

According to our CBDC Tracker there are currently at least 57 central banks exploring retail CBDC (rCBDC), of which 15 have either launched, piloted, or are in the very advanced exploration stages. We say “at least” because our count is based on reliable public sources (almost all from the central banks themselves). However, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 58 of the 65 central banks surveyed at end-2020 were exploring rCBDC. In any case, the growth in the number of rCBDC explorers has been remarkable (see figure below).