Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
Follow the Money
146 countries explore a CBDC while the US bans them outright and China’s e-CNY nears $2.3 trillion
A Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC, is the digital form of a country’s own currency, issued directly by its central bank rather than a private company. Unlike cryptocurrency, it carries the full backing of the state. In 2026, the world has split sharply over whether that is a good idea.
The Global Landscape in 2026
According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, 146 countries and currency unions, representing over 98% of global GDP, are now exploring a CBDC in some form, up from just 35 in 2020. Seventy-seven of them have reached an advanced phase: development, piloting, or launch, a new high.
Despite this breadth, only three countries have fully launched a retail CBDC: the Bahamas’ Sand Dollar, Jamaica’s JAM-DEX, and Nigeria’s eNaira. All three tell a similar story: real, functioning systems, but persistently slow public adoption and ongoing technical challenges years after launch.
Every G20 country explores a CBDC except one: the United States, now a genuine outlier among its peers, discussed in detail below.
The US Steps Back, Decisively
Washington’s position reversed completely under the Trump administration. In January 2025, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies not to pursue a US CBDC, citing risks to individual privacy and monetary sovereignty.
That position hardened further in 2026. On June 23, Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing bill that also included a rider statutorily banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC through December 31, 2030. The House passed it 358-32, the Senate 85-5.
Key officials have echoed this stance directly. Incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh called a US CBDC a “bad policy choice” posing systemic risk during his 2026 confirmation process. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further, stating a central bank digital currency was simply “off the table.”
Washington’s approach favours private alternatives instead. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, created the country’s first federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, complete with reserve requirements and federal licensing, positioning private digital dollars as the preferred path rather than a public one.
China’s e-CNY and the Geopolitics of Digital Money
China runs the world’s largest CBDC pilot by a wide margin. By December 2025, retail e-CNY had processed more than 3.4 billion transactions worth roughly 16.7 trillion yuan, approximately $2.3 trillion, spanning 26 cities and integrated directly with WeChat Pay and Alipay.
In January 2026, the People’s Bank of China reclassified e-CNY as deposit liabilities rather than digital cash, a technical shift that has left analysts uncertain about China’s next steps for the currency’s evolving role.
The geopolitical dimension matters as much as the domestic one. Project mBridge, linking the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and, since 2024, Saudi Arabia, has become the fastest-growing cross-border CBDC project in the world, with settlement volume surging to $55.49 billion, a 2,500-fold increase since its 2022 pilots. The Bank for International Settlements formally exited the project in 2024; it has continued without them.
This connects directly to the de-dollarization story RYB covers on its China Global Development page. All eleven BRICS members are exploring a CBDC, with nine already in pilot phase, and India, as 2026 BRICS summit host, has reportedly proposed linking member states’ digital currencies to facilitate cross-border trade outside dollar-based settlement systems entirely.
Europe’s Cautious Middle Path with CBDCs
The European Central Bank continues advancing a digital euro, now in an advanced preparation phase with a formal issuance decision anticipated during 2026. Even with approval, the ECB itself says live circulation remains two to three years away, with full rollout targeted around 2029.
Design details remain contested. The ECB has floated a holding limit around €3,000 per person, intended to prevent the digital euro from destabilising commercial bank deposits, while framing the project around preserving European “payment sovereignty” against dominant non-European payment platforms and private stablecoins.
The UK has moved more cautiously still. The Bank of England has explicitly stated no decision to build a digital pound has been taken, with any eventual version expected to coexist alongside physical cash indefinitely, under a proposed holding cap of £10,000 to £20,000.
The Financial Inclusion Promise, Tested Against Reality
CBDCs are frequently promoted as tools for financial inclusion, offering unbanked and underbanked populations safer, cheaper access to digital money. Nigeria’s eNaira, launched in October 2021 with exactly this goal, offers the clearest real-world test case so far, and the results are humbling: years after launch, adoption remains slow, hampered by limited trust, weak merchant uptake, and persistent technical barriers.
The more successful financial inclusion stories in the Global South have come from a different direction entirely. Brazil’s Pix instant payment system and India’s Unified Payments Interface, covered on RYB’s India Global Development page, are not CBDCs at all, yet both have achieved dramatically higher adoption than any launched CBDC. More than one hundred countries now operate similar instant payment systems, suggesting the underlying financial inclusion problem may be better solved by payment infrastructure than by the currency itself.
A more defensive motivation has also emerged. Some emerging markets, including Rwanda, Kazakhstan, and Bolivia, are now investing further in retail CBDC development specifically in response to the rapid growth of dollar-backed stablecoins, treating a domestic digital currency as a tool for monetary sovereignty rather than inclusion alone.
Why CBDCs Matter for Global Development
CBDCs intersect with global development on several fronts at once. Cheaper, faster domestic payment rails could meaningfully reduce transaction costs for remittances, a critical income source for many developing economies. Programmable digital currencies could also improve transparency in how aid and social payments actually reach recipients, connecting directly to the accountability questions RYB raises across its ODA coverage. The geopolitical dimension carries its own development stakes. Cross-border projects like mBridge, operating outside traditional Western-dominated payment infrastructure and BIS oversight, could reshape which countries have influence over the next generation of international settlement systems, with real consequences for developing economies caught between competing blocs. Yet Nigeria’s experience is a genuine caution against overstating what a CBDC alone can achieve. Financial inclusion appears to depend more on trust, merchant adoption, and usable infrastructure than on whether the underlying currency is a CBDC, a stablecoin, or simply a well-designed instant payment system.Looking Forward
The US and much of the rest of the world are now on genuinely divergent paths, a split unlikely to reverse before the American ban expires at the end of 2030 at the earliest. Whether private stablecoins fill the gap the GENIUS Act created for them, or whether pressure builds for a policy reversal, will shape US digital currency policy for years.
The ECB’s expected 2026 issuance decision is the clearest near-term milestone to watch elsewhere, though even a “yes” delays real circulation into 2028 or 2029. China’s reclassification of e-CNY as a deposit liability, and the continued rapid growth of mBridge outside BIS involvement, both deserve close attention as signals of where global monetary architecture is heading.
RYB will track how CBDC adoption, especially in developing countries like Nigeria, compares against non-CBDC alternatives like Pix and UPI, since that comparison may prove more informative for financial inclusion policy than the CBDC tracker numbers alone. This page will be updated as new launches, bans, and adoption data emerge.
Sources and References
- Atlantic Council, Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker — atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker
- Atlantic Council, GeoEconomics Center, “Future of Money” — atlanticcouncil.org
- Lexology, “The Digital Dollar Freeze: Housing Bill Codifies the U.S. Anti-CBDC Stance” — lexology.com
- Payment Expert, “CBDC divide: EU advances Digital Euro, US blocks dollar” — paymentexpert.com
- Eco, “CBDC Updates 2026: What Changed This Year” — eco.com
- Libertify, “CBDC Tracker: Global Digital Currency Analysis” — libertify.com
- IMF, “A Survey of Research on Retail Central Bank Digital Currency” — imf.org
- RYB, Official Development Assistance (ODA) — redyellowblue.org/finance/oda/