The giant payment network VISA announced that it is currently working on a new interoperability solution for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). According to a recent blog post published by the VISA global CBDC product lead Catherine Gu, the goal is to create a “universal adapter” for companies, governments and businesses to exchange value independently on the currency they use.
VISA is Working on an Interoperability Solution for CBDCs
There has been a lot of discussions around central bank digital currencies and the impact they could have on the market. This is closely related to how the cryptocurrency market expanded over the last years and how it could continue growing in the future.
As per the recent blog post released by VISA, with the new system they are developing, it would be possible for a person in the United States to send USDC to a friend in London with the other person receiving British pounds (GBP) on their wallets using a CBDC.
About it, Gu stated:
“As the number of digital currency networks increases — each with unique design characteristics — the likelihood that consumers, businesses, and merchants are transacting on the same network and utilizing the same type of money decreases.”
Gu is making reference to the large number of new crypto projects that have been developed in recent years. Several of these projects require a unique blockchain network to operate. That makes it difficult for merchants and companies around the world to get aligned in terms of the blockchain network they should use.
Let’s also not forget that not every single blockchain network offers the same services. We now have the question, under which blockchain would governments release their CBDCs? Would they be public blockchains or simply centralized systems? These are things for which we don’t still have an answer as the market has not yet seen a functioning CBDC.
Gu wrote that they believe that CBDCs would have to focus on consumer experience and also a widespread merchant acceptance. This could happen within a few years as it already happened with Bitcoin (BTC). In the future, we might see not only one CBDC but many, the ideal CBDC would be to have one per currency.
At the moment there are some countries that are working on different CBDC projects, including the United Kingdom, China and even developing countries such as Ukraine or Uruguay. This shows there is a real interest in CBDCs among central banks in different regions.
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