For years the Bank of Japan has operated a retail CBDC research initiative with seven working groups and 64 companies involved. That research has continued despite comments last year that there’s no need for a launch. In early February this year, as part of the ongoing CBDC Forum, central bank director Kazushige Kamiyama said that the research will be expanded to include a wholesale CBDC and tokenization.
Today the Nikkei elaborated on the goals behind the latest CBDC project. The ability to tokenize part of the deposits held at the central bank could enable settlement between banks 24/7 instead of five days a week during business hours. Additionally, it would support programmable payments. Few other details have been released, but Europe’s wholesale DLT settlement work appears to be part of the inspiration.
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