A year after publishing an open call for partners to experiment with central bank digital currency (CBDC) tests, Spain’s central bank, Banco de España, has chosen its collaborators. On Jan. 3, the central bank published a resolution announcing its partnership with Cecabank, Abanca and Adhara Blockchain.
The pilot of the wholesale CBDC will take place in the next six months and will feature the simulation of the processing and settlement of interbank payments both with a single tokenized wholesale CBDC and by exchanging several wholesale CBDCs issued by different central banks.
In another part of the experiment conducted with the help of the Cecabank-Abanca consortium, the wholesale CBDC will be used for the settlement of a simulated tokenized bond.
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Three companies were chosen from the 24 applications the central bank has received over the past year. While both Cecabank and Abanca are Spanish, the headquarters of Adhara Blockchain is in the United Kingdom.
The Spanish CBDC program is somewhat unique, as it was publicly stated to be independent of the digital euro project that would cover all economies in the eurozone if implemented. Meanwhile, the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation announced it would implement the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation six months before the deadline. And in October, the Bank of Spain published a text explaining the nature and uses of the digital euro.
Spaniards themselves haven’t expressed a significant interest in using the digital euro. A survey in October showed that only 20% confirmed that they would use the pan-European CBDC to complement their regular payment methods, while 65% said they would not.
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