European Union central banks will publish plans for a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the coming weeks, François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of France’s central bank, said at a Tuesday event in Paris.
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Fast Facts
- Galhau said CBDC experiments will be rolled out next year, including trials with real transactions.
- He added that a permissioned network using smart contracts would enable banks to continue governing the money supply in the economy, which central bankers say is important for managing inflation and maintaining financial stability.
- A wholesale CBDC is primarily used by financial institutions for interbank settlements rather than every day transactions that are enabled by a retail CBDC.
- The development comes three months after the EU published two proposals, including one for the digital euro, the European Central Bank’s CBDC.
- Villeroy de Galhau said that the central bank will be exploring blockchain and alternative protocols for settlement, besides the bank’s own Distributed Ledger for Securities Settlement System (DL3S), which is a permissioned blockchain designed for settlement via CBDC.
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