Australia will test CBDC and stablecoins with participation from leading banks

What’s new? The Reserve Bank of Australia has moved to the next stage of exploring digital currencies by announcing a pilot to explore the use of cryptocurrencies and tokenization in wholesale financial markets. The experiment will be conducted as part of the Acacia project, which was set up by the central bank with the participation of the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, a cross-industry consortium that includes some of the country’s leading universities.

Central bank statement

What else is known? The project partners, which range from local fintech companies to large banks, will use stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, and the central bank’s pilot wholesale digital currency (CBDC).

In total, participants will test 24 usage scenarios, with 19 involving real money and five simulating real-world transactions. The tests will cover several asset classes, including fixed income instruments, receivables, and carbon credits.

This phase is expected to take six months, and the results will be published in Q1 2026.

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Three of Australia’s four largest commercial banks will participate in the trial, including Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), and Westpac.

CBA will work with JPMorgan to explore how digital currencies and collateral data can offer greater efficiency and liquidity with lower risk in the repo market, which involves short-term borrowing and lending against government securities.

“The repo market, with its critical role in liquidity management and monetary policy implementation, represents an ideal starting point for this exploration,” said Sophie Gilder, CBA’s managing director of blockchain and digital assets.

In turn, ANZ will lead a test of using tokenized trade payables to address working capital and cash flow issues faced by suppliers.

It will also explore tokenized fixed income instruments, in particular the use of CBDCs to facilitate risk-free settlement.

The Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has granted market participants a waiver from some regulatory requirements to allow them to test assets that are currently unregulated.

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Earlier, the Bank of Russia announced that the country’s largest banks will add support for the digital ruble by September 1, 2026. Trading companies and financial institutions serving them will also be obliged to implement CBDC.

Also, the Central Bank of China announced the launch of an international operating center for the digital yuan, aimed at expanding the global influence of the national currency.