Bank Negara Malaysia focuses on wholesale CBDC research and has no plans for recent issuance
ChainCatcher news, the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) recently stated that it will focus on the research of wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) and will not consider issuing retail CBDC for the time being. The bank believes that the existing system is sufficient to meet retail payment needs.BNM stated that wCBDC will be used for interbank settlements of tokenized deposits both domestically and internationally, and has participated in Singapore's multi-CBDC project "Project Dunbar" and the cross-border CBDC project "mBridge." Although technical preparations and policy research are underway, BNM plans to continue researching wCBDC and distributed ledger technology in 2024-2025, but there are no immediate issuance plans.Several Asian central banks, including those in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, are also exploring wCBDC to support tokenized deposits. A report by Ledger Insights indicates that there are currently over 70 tokenized deposit and bank stablecoin projects in progress.