Brazilian authorities have announced that the country’s CBDC will be called Drex and that 16 banking proposals have been selected for the upcoming trial period.
The move looks to complement the growing digitalisation of the economy, with it focusing on a secure and stable environment for growing businesses.
The CBDC is set to launch into the Brazilian economy in early 2024, should trials run smoothly.
It underlines that South America’s largest nation has been one of the most receptive towards a potential CBDC, and comes after a paper by the Bank of Canada revealed that for it the benefits of a CBDC to be felt by the economy it would need to be widely embraced.
Nonetheless, among those selected for the pilot in Brazil are Visa and Microsoft, two names which the country’s government will feel add weight to the potential growth and legitimacy to the potential of a CBDC.
Central to the trial is testing the compatibility of the firms in question, with it focusing on privacy – a factor that has been a vital concern for those skeptical of a CBDC.
Privacy and programmability are being touted by the region as the heart of the trial period, looking to explore the next phase of CBDC implementation.
