Today blockchain developer SETL announced it joined one of the digital real pilot consortia led by Banco Bradesco, which also includes interbank clearing house NUCLEA. It follows the May announcement by the Banco Central do Brasil of the 16 participants in its central bank digital currency (CBDC) simulations. Additionally, last week it unveiled the new digital real brand, Drex.
Given Brazil already has a robust retail mobile payment system, Pix, the focus of the Drex work is on an interbank CBDC. Retail access will be enabled by bank deposit tokens and tokenized emoney in the case of payment providers. The key objective is to lower the cost of financial services and expand the range of options by encouraging blockchain and tokenization. Hence the need for an onchain settlement asset.
The cryptocurrency arena offers transparency which comes with the downside that everyone’s transactions are visible if you know their wallet address. Hence, one of the goals of the current CBDC work phase is to explore privacy solutions and also to enable programmability, particularly for atomic settlement.
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