Central Bank of China: Digital Yuan Transactions Touch USD 250 Billion until June 2023

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed it is working on a platform for a central bank digital currency (CDBC). This platform will later enable transactions between countries.

“CBDCs must not be fragmented by national propositions… To have more efficient and fairer transactions, we need a system that connects countries: we need interoperability,” said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, quoted from Channel News Asia, Tuesday (20/6/2023).

“For this reason at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform,” he told a conference attended by African central banks in Rabat, Morocco.

Apart from that, the IMF is also targeting a central bank agreement on a common regulatory framework for digital currencies that will enable global interoperability.

According to Georgiva, failure to agree on a common platform will create a void that cryptocurrencies are likely to fill.

For information, CBDC is a digital currency controlled by a central bank, while cryptocurrencies are almost always decentralized.

Georgiva said that there were 114 central banks that were already at the CBDC exploration stage, “with about 10 already crossing the finish line”. “If countries develop CDBC only for domestic deployment, we are under-utilizing its capacity,” he added.