More central bank digital currency trials by end of the year
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The news: The Reserve Bank of Australia has named the fintechs and banks participating in a series of digital money and crypto asset trials later this year under Project Acacia, which has received regulatory waivers from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.
The context: The 19 pilot use cases involving real money and real asset transactions will be tested over the next six months alongside five proof-of-concept use cases involving simulated transactions.
The use cases – under the RBA and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre joint initiative – will involve a range of asset classes including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables and carbon credits.
Settlement assets in the trial will include stablecoins, bank deposit tokens and pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in addition to new ways of using banks’ existing RBA exchange settlement accounts.
The pilot wholesale CBDC will be issued across several private and public-permissioned blockchain platforms including Hedera, Redbelly, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect and other networks capable of executing ethereum-based smart contracts.
ASIC issued a regulatory exemption for participants in the Project Acacia trials on 4 July. The project is also supported by the Commonwealth Treasury and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
A report on the findings from the project is expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026.
A consultation paper on initiating Project Acacia was released in November 2024 and builds on previous trials undertaken in 2023.
The lead use case participants are:
- Australian Bond Exchange
- ANZ
- Australian Payments Plus
- Canvas
- Catena Digital
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia
- Fireblocks
- Forte Tech Solutions
- Imperium Markets
- Northern Trust
- NotCentralised
- ProspEx Group
- Westpac
- Zerocap
What they said: “The use cases selected in this project will help us to better understand how innovations in central bank and private digital money, alongside payments infrastructure, might help to uplift the functioning of wholesale financial markets in Australia,” RBA assistant governor of the financial system Brad Jones said.
The source: Reserve Bank of Australia media release
