Brazilian Central Banks selects nine companies for CBDC Pilot
The Brazilian Central Bank (Banco Central do Brasil, BCB), which runs the “LIFT Challenge” for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) togehter with Fenasbac, has selected nine out of 47 proposals for the MVP stage of the CBDC.
The nine companies, which will have four months from the end of March to the end of July to develop their MVP, are:
- Aave
- Banco Santander
- Febraban
- Gieseck + Devrient
- Itaú Unibanco, B3 and R3
- Mercado Bitcoin, Bitrust and CPqD
- Tecban and Capitual
- Vert, Digital Assets and Oliver Wyman
- Visa do Brasil, ConsenSys and Microsoft
Requirements for the submissions were outlined in terms of product categories, and infrastructure requirements. There were four product categories:
- Delivery versus Payment (DvP) aimed at the settlement of transactions with digital assets, both native to the digital environment or tokenized
- Payment versus Payment (PvP) aimed at the exchange between currencies
- Internet of Things (IoT) aimed at direct settlement by algorithms or machine-to-machine
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) aimed at defining protocols with settlement based on a CBDC and at compliance and supervision requirements established in the regulation
Regardless of the product category, the following infrastructure requirements need to be fulfilled:
- Interoperability with other payment systems, available for both retail and wholesale operations
- Scalability of the technological solution, aimed at nationwide retail applications
- Accessibility and usability
- Privacy of the information in the case of use, in compliance with the relevant Brazilian legislation
- Programmability of the proposed solution, aimed at enabling innovation and the development of new solutions and products based on the proposed platform
If you would like to learn more about the Brazilian FinTech ecosystem, and the perspective on the BCB’s work from a local industry expert, please tune in to our recent eXponential Finance Podcast with Bruno Diniz:
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