⚡ The Swedish Central Bank Shares CBDC Development Insights
posted 21 Mar 2024
The Riksbank has published a report detailing the fourth phase of testing for the e-Krona. Throughout the pilot phase, which spanned from 2020 to 2023, the bank tested the e-Krona's fundamental use cases as a retail currency accessible to the general public. This iteration of the e-Krona was developed on the Corda distributed ledger platform by R3, with the central bank serving as a notary node responsible for verifying and finalizing transactions.
The fourth phase primarily focused on transactions between online wallets and offline payment tools, offline payments at Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals, and offline transactions between two cards. Moreover, the developers explored the distribution of CBDCs to citizens and their use in international transfers.
The testing phase uncovered several challenges, such as the requirement for offline transactions to sync with the bank’s database, leading to potential connectivity issues and inadequate liquidity in online accounts.
The Riksbank views CBDCs as a means to preserve fiat currencies, predicting the eventual obsolescence of paper money.