Value of CBDC payments to hit $213bn annually by 2030

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) transactions will top $213 billion annually by 2030, mainly as a result of governments using CBDCs to boost financial inclusion, according to Juniper Research.

The new study predicted that the value of payments via CBDCs will soar 260,000% to $213 billion by the end of the decade, up from $100 million in 2023.

Juniper Research revealed in its study that, by 2030, 92% of the total value transacted via CBDCs will be paid domestically, compared to almost 100% during the current pilot stages, as of 2023.

Nick Maynard, head of research at Juniper Research and author of the report, said: “While cross-border payments currently have high costs and slow transaction speeds, this area is not the focus of CBDC development.

“As CBDC adoption will be very country specific, it will be incumbent on cross-border payment networks to link schemes together; allowing the wider payments industry to benefit from CBDCs.”

The research by Juniper Research identified that the current CBDC market is limited by a lack of commercial product development, with few “well-defined platforms” for central banks to leverage.

It has recommended that prospective CBDC platform providers develop a full end-to-end solution, including wholesale capabilities, wallet provision and merchant acceptance, “in order to enable the realisation of CBDCs’ potential”.

Last week, ‘Project Icebreaker’, which is a collaboration between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of Israel, Norway and Sweden, set up to explore the potential benefits and challenges of retail CBDCs in international payments, concluded.

On a recent episode of Open Banking Expo Unplugged, Xiaochen Zhang, global head of innovation and go-to-market at AWS, and Erica Salinas, principal technical leader – Web3 at Amazon, explained why central banks are exploring CBDCs.