Davos Witnessed Dawn of digital currency

Amid growing interest in digital currency, the WEF and a community of over 40 central banks, international organisations, academic researchers and financial institutions have created a framework to help central banks evaluate, design and potential deploy such instruments.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) said the National Bank of Cambodia has already piloted a quasi-form of CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) for its national payments system.

Besides, the central banks of Bahrain, Thailand and Uruguay are applying the toolkit to their CBDC evaluation process, while the People's Bank of China and Eastern Caribbean Central Bank are also among early movers.

The CBDC has risen to prominence as a potential solution to multiple challenges such as financial inclusion and payment system efficiency. But due in part to the market-moving nature of central bank announcements, the majority of research and experimentation is done independently, behind closed doors, the WEF said.

At its 50th annual meeting here, the WEF said it gathered insights from central bank researchers, global policy makers, international organizations and experts from over 40 institutions to create the CBDC Policy-Maker Toolkit.

Blockchain and academic experts from around the world also contributed to the design and content to help policy makers within central banks confidently evaluate whether CBDC is the right fit for their economy and guide them through the evaluation, design and deployment process.