RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones said the potential benefits of a retail CBDC in Australia appear modest or uncertain at present.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says it won’t be pursuing a retail CBDC anytime soon, but instead, it will focus its efforts on launching a wholesale CBDC.
In a Sept. 18 speech at the Intersekt Fintech Conference in Melbourne, RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones presented the Australian central bank’s three-year roadmap, which focuses largely on the development of a wholesale CBDC.
Jones said the RBA’s research had found a retail CBDC offered little in the way of genuine innovation for public use in Australia, whereas a wholesale CBDC would offer several key advantages to commercial and central banks.