Australia's ANZ Bank Completes First CBDC Use Case Trial

Cetoex News - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited has tied up Grollo Carbon Ventures. Together, they traded Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), making it a landmark achievement in Australia’s CBDC pilot run. According to the official statement,

“This marks the completion of the Bank’s first use-case as part of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot run by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC).”

Notably, the DFCRC is a multi-million dollar program and is funded by various universities, partners, and the Australian Government.

Tokenization can boost efficiency: ANZ Exec

For this trial, ANZ and its partner sought to test the tokenization of real-world, nature-based assets, starting with ACCUs. To do so, the top Australian bank tokenized existing ACCUs and issued its stablecoin, A$DC. That enabled GCV to buy tokenized ACCUs with settlement occurring in “near real-time” via ANZ smart contracts.

Specifically, the transaction took place on a public blockchain and brought to light the use case of digital assets to “reduce settlement time and help mitigate settlement-related counterparty risk.” In this case, the pilot CBDC was used as a risk-free asset to underpin the issuance of A$DC.

An ANZ executive said that the bank is “pleased” to explore secure access to the digital economy in a way that supports the community and environment with Grollo. Elaborating on the same, ANZ Banking Services Lead, Nigel Dobson, said,

“When applied to carbon markets, tokenization has the potential to improve efficiency and transparency, reduce risk and preserve the unique characteristics of underlying projects to incentivize investment in climate solutions.”

On the other hand, Grollo Group CEO, Lorenz Grollo, said,

“As more organizations implement net-zero transition plans the demand for nature-based assets is expected to grow significantly.”

It should be noted that the Australian CBDC is in its testing phase currently. It was started in August 2021 and the bank further hopes to wrap up its pilot program by mid of this year.  Many industry players, including small fintech companies and major financial institutions, are taking part in the pilot initiatives. Apart from the ANZ bank, RBA has tied up with Mastercard, Monoova, the Australian Bond Exchange, DigiCash, and Commonwealth Bank, among others.

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