- Ashok Venkateshwaran was speaking at the Singapore FinTech festival.
- As many as 130 nations, accounting for 98% of global GDP, are working on a CBDC.
The head of Mastercard’s blockchain and digital assets for the APAC region told CNBC that CBDCs are unnecessary since consumers are already comfortable with fiat currency. Ashok Venkateshwaran, speaking on the fringes of the Singapore FinTech festival on Wednesday, said that adoption is the most challenging aspect of the industry.
Venkateshwaran stated:
“So if you have CBDCs in your wallet, you should have the ability for you to spend it anywhere you want – very similar to cash today.”
Ripple, Fireblocks, and Consensys are just a few of the companies involved in the payments behemoth’s CBDC Partner Program. In addition to facilitating dialogue between major stakeholders in the sector, the action was seen as Mastercard increasing its participation with CBDC advances as the number of countries investigating the technology expands.
CBDC Race
According to the Atlantic Council, as many as 130 nations, accounting for 98% of global GDP, are investigating the possibility of establishing a CBDC. As of May 2020, just 35 nations were even thinking about adopting one. However, only 11 nations have implemented a digital currency at this time.
It’s tough to see the point in trying right now, he remarked. It requires a significant amount of time and effort by the nation to build the essential infrastructure as per Venkateshwaran.
Last week, Mastercard concluded Hong Kong’s CBDC Pilot aimed at showing how CBDCs or tokenized deposits may be utilized for real-world asset transactions. The pilot project also demonstrated the feasibility of CBDC retail settlement into and out of Web3 marketplaces. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), as recently predicted by Bank of America (BAC) research, are on the horizon but not near.
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