More Central Banks Mulling Digital Currencies

Many central banks have or plan to launch digital central bank money. A PwC study looks at the winners and losers.

A study from PwC released Monday analyzing central banks’ level of maturity and development of their digital currencies (CBDCs), shows that Nigeria’s eNaira scores high in retail models, with Thailand the frontrunner among wholesale customers.

According to PwC’s Global CBDC Index report, over 80 percent of central banks have issued CBDCs or are in the process of doing so.

This year’s PwC report looks at two separate models, retail and wholesale, ranking CBDCs on a scale of 100.

Thailand came out atop the wholesale rankings, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. Switzerland jumped up two spots from 12th to move into the top 10 globally and to second place in Europe.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) completed Phase II of the CBDC’s Helvetia project in January 2022. Together with five commercial banks, the SNB examined the settlement of interbank, monetary policy, and cross-border transactions on SIX Digital Exchange’s (SDX) test systems, the Swiss real-time gross settlement system SIX Interbank Clearing (SIC), and the core banking systems.

Retail CBDCs reached a higher level of maturity than their wholesale counterparts, according to PwC, with the Nigerian eNaira receiving a score of 95, making it the most developed in the retail category.

Also notable in the retail category was the Bahamas, which became the first country ever to introduce a digital central bank currency – the Sand Dollar. Jamaica’s Jam-Dex is scheduled to launch later this year. Thailand and Hong Kong top the large customer category for their joint mBridge project for cross-border payments.

PwC found that stablecoins, which are private virtual digital currencies that peg their market value to an external reference, have become an integral part of the crypto ecosystem. It is impossible for any crypto fund or institution to be active in the crypto world without using stablecoins, the report said.