Research: a group of central banks developed 33 API functionalities to test 30+ CBDC online, offline, and in-store use cases, via QR codes, phones, and more
Context & Ripple Effects
This work extends the CBDC design agenda set out when seven central banks articulated shared principles and core features for digital currencies. It moves the discussion from design criteria toward reusable implementation interfaces for varied payment settings.
It also sits between earlier simulation tools, including Mastercard's central-bank digital-currency testing tool, and country-level pilots such as India's planned bank-participant CBDC test. The significance is the attempt to make online, offline, and merchant interactions testable through a common functional layer.
First-order effects
- Participating central banks gain a defined set of API functions for testing retail CBDC journeys across phone, QR-code, online, offline, and in-store contexts rather than evaluating each channel in isolation.
- The work gives banks, payment providers, and merchants a clearer technical surface to test interoperability and user flows, while remaining a testing exercise rather than a deployment decision.
Second-order effects
- A shared API-oriented approach can push CBDC pilots toward comparable integration requirements for wallet, merchant-acceptance, and payment-network participants.
- Offline and in-store scenarios raise the practical importance of resilience, device behavior, and transaction controls alongside simple account-to-account payment functionality.
Third-order effects
- If central banks continue converging on reusable interfaces, CBDC development could shift from isolated pilots toward a more modular payments stack, with interoperability becoming a central design choice.
- The broader trade-off remains durable: more programmable settlement options can expand payment use cases while increasing the need to define limits on policy control and data access.
The trend: CBDC programs are progressing from principles and simulations toward testing the technical interfaces needed to operate across everyday payment environments.