Yesterday the Bank of Thailand released a report on its retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. It was generally happy with the results and believes a retail CBDC would promote innovation. However, it has no immediate plans to release a digital baht. Instead, it plans to open a sandbox for private programmable payments and tokenization.
Thailand’s trials are worthy of attention as it’s one of the most experienced central banks in this area. Interest in CBDC spiked following the announcement of Facebook’s plans for the Libra / Diem stablecoin. But by then the Bank of Thailand was already exploring CBDC as part of Project Inthanon. One of its experiments with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) evolved into project mBridge, the cross border CBDC platform that’s planning to launch a minimum viable product soon.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Thailand’s retail CBDC pilot that ran until October 2023 included two of Thailand’s largest banks, Krungsri and Siam Commercial Bank and payment provider 2c2p alongside 4,000 consumers and 140 merchants. Giesecke+Devrient was the technology provider and the central bank chose a token based solution based on a centralized ledger.
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