In August, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) published the results of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot in conjunction with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). One of the 16 use cases was from Mastercard, which shared additional details yesterday.
While the central bank issued the eAUD CBDC on a private blockchain, several use cases explored how to use a CBDC on a public blockchain. Often non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on public blockchains are priced in cryptocurrency. However, the pricing of NFTs targeting mainstream consumers is in US dollars or local currency. For fiat currency pricing, people often pay with Visa or Mastercard, and on chain settlement uses stablecoins.
As an alternative, Mastercard wanted to explore how to use a CBDC instead of a stablecoin to pay for an NFT. Hence, Mastercard issued a so-called ‘wrapped’ CBDC on the Ethereum blockchain. The equivalent amount of pilot eAUD was locked in Mastercard’s RBA wallet.
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