The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), in collaboration with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), has announced a list of selected use cases and providers that will participate in a live research pilot to determine the economic benefits of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The initiative, which was first announced in August last year, is believed to be an opportunity to “further understanding of some of the technological, legal and regulatory considerations associated with a CBDC”.

The selected industry participants will demonstrate potential use cases for a CBDC using a limited-scale pilot CBDC that is a real digital claim on the Reserve Bank.

According to the RBA, the project received a large number of use case submissions from a range of industry participants, with a range of criteria considered in selecting the most suitable use cases.

The following use cases and providers have been invited to participate in the pilot:

Brad Jones, Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the RBA, noted that selected providers in the pilot spanned a wide range of entities from the Australian financial system, from smaller fintechs to large financial institutions. He added that the pilot and broader research study will be conducted in parallel to serve two ends.

“It will contribute to hands-on learning by industry, and it will add to policy makers’ understanding of how a CBDC could potentially benefit the Australian financial system and economy.”

According to Dilip Rao, program director – CBDC with the DFCRC, the variety of use cases proposed covered a range of problems that could potentially be addressed by CBDC, including some that involved the use of CBDC for atomic settlement of transactions in tokenised assets.

“The process of validating use cases with industry participants and regulators will inform further research into design considerations for a CBDC that could potentially play a role in a tokenised economy.”