In January, the Bank of Spain announced two projects for its wholesale central bank digital currency (wholesale CBDC) trials. These initiatives are separate from the Eurosystem and ECB’s wholesale DLT settlement pilots. Recently, the Spanish central bank confirmed a third trial involving payment processor Minsait, a subsidiary of consulting firm Indra. This trial will run for five months alongside the other two experiments.
Spain’s wholesale CBDC trial plans were revealed before the ECB launched its initiative to explore wholesale DLT settlement. While the ECB pilot involves real money movements for some use cases, Spain’s trials are simulations. Notably, all three exploratory projects are not funded by the central bank.
Adhara is developing a wholesale CBDC solution encompassing multiple CBDCs, interbank payments and tokenized deposits. Meanwhile, a consortium led by Cecabank and including Abanca is conducting wholesale CBDC trials for the settlement of tokenized securities.
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