A group of central banks has published a joint assessment of tokenised settlement, concluding that wholesale applications offer clearer near-term benefits than retail digital currency.
The report is notably warm on tokenised commercial bank deposits, which preserve the existing two-tier money structure while allowing programmable settlement between institutions.
On retail issuance, the tone is cautious. The authors note that the case rests on payment-system resilience and competition rather than on demand from consumers, who in surveys report satisfaction with existing instruments.
Private stablecoins receive a chapter of their own. The report treats them as a fact of the payments landscape and argues that supervision, not prohibition, is the workable response.
Several pilots are referenced, including cross-border experiments that settled foreign exchange transactions atomically on a shared ledger.
Officials stressed that the document reflects analysis rather than commitment, and no timelines are attached to any of the described work.
