[3][4][5] The Central Bank of Brazil was developing a digital version of the Brazilian sovereign currency, known as Drex, based on the guidelines established in May 2021, and aiming to release the CBDC by the end of 2024.
Chengdu became the first city to implement e-CNY payments across its entire public transportation system, including all buses and subway lines.
This integration is part of a broader pilot operation phase aiming to test the digital currency's feasibility and utility in everyday transactions.
[17][18] At the end of 2021, there were 261 million users in the extended trial who had made US$13.8 billion of transactions [19] It has also been rolled out for foreign attendees at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where it has seen limited use due to entrenched digital currencies and Visa, as well as lack of publicity.
[20] On March 31, 2022, People's Bank of China announced that the testing has been further expanded to six additional regions: Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and six cities in the province of Zhejiang that are hosting the 2022 Asian Games (Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing, and Jinhua).
It subsequently rolled out the CBDC to the rest of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Montserrat and Anguilla.
[28] The program might have closed due to a combination of factors, including a defective implementation, the lack of procedures to preferential use in public expenditures, and mainly, commercial bank opposition.
This was the banks' main public criticism, as clearly stated by the BCE's general manager: "[they] wanted to mix the use of a payment system available in mobile phones with a de-dollarization process" (La Hora 2016).
Ultimately, the banking sector's opposition contributed significantly to DE's demise, as admitted by the new government's BCE general manager (Artola, 2017).
[34] The day after an executive order signed by Donald Trump promoted US$ pegged stablecoins, on 24 January 2025, European Central Bank board member Piero Cipollone said "I guess the key word here [in Trump's executive order] is worldwide" and "This solution, you all know, further disintermediates banks as they lose fees, they lose clients...That's why we need a digital euro.
[36] In June 2024, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has announced an extension of the pilot (Project Helvetia III) to explore new use cases and expand the scope.
[38] On 29 January 2021, Government of India proposed a bill to ban trading and investments in cryptocurrencies while giving legal power to the RBI for developing CBDC.
[48][49] On 26 June 2022, Myanmar's National Unity Government (NUG) issued an official statement[50] regarding the establishment of DMMK, along with its companion mobile wallet NUGPay, although the news was announced in earlier date.
[51] According to Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment of NUG, 1 DMMK is equivalent to 1 MMK and the exchange rate will be announced on weekly basis.
[36] On June 21, 2023, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a whitepaper proposing a common protocol to specify conditions for the use of digital money including CBDCs on a distributed ledger.
[36] The CBRT successfully tested the first payment transaction using the digital lira in January 2023, and planned to run further phases of pilot studies to widen participation in 2023.
[36] In May 2021, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced plans to publish a discussion paper on central bank digital currency, focusing on the possibility of issuing a US CBDC.
[71] In February 2022 the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released initial details of Project Hamilton, a potential United States CBDC.
[73] On March 9, 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on ensuring responsible development of digital assets, the White House said.
[75] On 23 January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stipulating that "Except to the extent required by law, agencies are hereby prohibited from undertaking any action to establish, issue, or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad” and "any ongoing plans or initiatives at any agency related to the creation of a CBDC within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be immediately terminated, and no further actions may be taken to develop or implement such plans or initiatives.”[77][78] In November 2017, the central bank of Uruguay announced to begin a test to issue digital Uruguayan pesos.