Leading Countries in CBDC Development: A Comprehensive Update as of July 2025

Key Takeaways

• Emerging‑market trailblazers (Bahamas, Nigeria, Jamaica) proved small‑country CBDC launches are feasible, though adoption remains gradual.
• China, India, Brazil & Russia lead large‑scale pilots, demonstrating retail CBDCs can reach mass‑market scale.
• Advanced economies stay cautious but active—Europe’s forthcoming decision on a digital euro is the next global inflection point.
• Wholesale & cross‑border pilots are proliferating, laying the rails for faster, sanction‑resistant global payments.

CBDCs are moving from theory to early‑stage reality; the second half of the decade will likely see wider public launches and interconnected digital‑currency corridors.

Introduction

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have rapidly evolved from a niche concept into a major focus for central banks worldwide. As of mid-2025, 137 countries and currency unions (representing 98% of global GDP) are exploring CBDCs, a huge jump from only 35 in May 2020.

Of these, 72 jurisdictions are in advanced stages (development, pilot, or launch), with a record 49 CBDC pilots underway. Three countries have fully launched retail CBDCs – The Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria – and all are now working to expand the usage of their digital currencies domestically.

This surge is driven largely by emerging markets seeking to reduce cash reliance, boost financial inclusion, and improve payment oversight, especially in response to the rise of private stablecoin. Meanwhile, many advanced economies are intensifying research and collaboration on both retail and wholesale CBDCs (the latter designed for interbank settlement), recognizing CBDCs as a key element in the “future of money” and even a matter of economic strategy and sovereignty.

In this report, we provide a comprehensive update on which countries are leading CBDC development and implementation – covering retail vs. wholesale initiatives, recent launches and pilots, cross-border collaborations, and major milestones – and distinguish between stages of progress (research, pilot, or launched).

Retail CBDCs: Launches and Large-Scale Pilots

Fully Launched Retail CBDCs

A handful of countries have moved beyond experimentation to officially launch retail CBDCs as legal tender for general use. Notably:

• The Bahamas – “Sand Dollar”: Launched in October 2020, the Sand Dollar was the world’s first nationwide CBDC. The Central Bank of The Bahamas rolled it out to enhance financial access across the islands (many of which lack banking services) and to “disaster-proof” the payments system. This small Caribbean nation became a global pioneer, demonstrating a live CBDC in action.
  
• Nigeria – “eNaira”: Nigeria introduced the eNaira in October 2021, making it Africa’s first CBDC. Aimed at expanding financial inclusion and improving remittances, the eNaira is a digital version of the naira issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria. While adoption initially lagged (as many Nigerians continued to prefer cash or other digital apps), authorities have been adjusting policies to spur usage, and the focus in 2025 remains on expanding its reach and utility domestically.
  
• Jamaica – “Jam-Dex”: The Bank of Jamaica officially launched its retail CBDC (Jamaica Digital Exchange, or Jam-Dex) in 2022, after a pilot in 2021. Jam-Dex is intended to promote financial inclusion and provide a digital cash alternative for everyday transactions. Like the other launched CBDCs, its rollout has been gradual; public adoption has been modest so far, so Jamaican authorities are actively encouraging more merchants and consumers to use it (for example, by supporting point-of-sale technology upgrades).

In addition to these countries, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) has implemented a regional retail CBDC known as DCash. First piloted in 2021, DCash is issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank for several island nations (e.g. St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, and others) that share the EC dollar.

This makes the ECCU one of the first currency unions to launch a digital currency, although it has been described as a pilot rollout and faced some technical challenges since inception. However, fully launched CBDCs remain rare in 2025 – limited to a few early movers – but they provide valuable lessons as larger economies watch closely.

Major Retail CBDC Pilots

Several more countries are in pilot stages of retail CBDCs, testing digital currencies in controlled environments or limited regions prior to a full launch. The most advanced retail CBDC pilots include:

• China – Digital Yuan (e-CNY): China’s digital renminbi (e-CNY) pilot is by far the world’s largest and most advanced CBDC trial. Initiated by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) in 2020, the pilot has expanded to 17 provinces and major cities, with millions of users and businesses participating. Usage has grown explosively: as of June 2024 the cumulative transaction volume in e-CNY reached ¥7 trillion (≈$1 trillion), nearly four times the total a year prior.
  
  This huge uptake (facilitated by state-sponsored promotions and integration into apps for payments in retail, transit, government services, etc.) underscores China’s lead in implementation. However, the digital yuan is still officially in pilot status – it has not been nationally rolled out to all citizens, pending further evaluation. Chinese officials also have an eye on the e-CNY’s geopolitical implications; they view it as part of a strategy for a more internationalized yuan in a multipolar currency world. China has even used e-CNY experimentally in a few cross-border transactions, and it is deeply involved in multi-country CBDC projects (discussed later).

• India – e₹ (Digital Rupee): India’s digital rupee (often written as e₹) is now the world’s second-largest CBDC pilot by scale. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched pilot programs for the e-rupee in late 2022 – first for wholesale interbank settlement (November 2022) and then for retail use (December 2022). Since then, India has steadily expanded the pilot across more cities and banks.
  
  By March 2025, roughly ₹10.16 billion in digital rupees (approximately $122 million) were in circulation, a 334% increase from a year earlier. This rapid growth reflects broader participation and new use cases (such as retail payments and government bond settlements in CBDC form).
  
  In 2025 the RBI is broadening the pilot’s scope – testing offline functionality, adding more users (including rural areas), and trialing integration with existing payment platforms. India’s progress, alongside China’s, exemplifies how large emerging economies are forging ahead with retail CBDCs in a phased but ambitious manner.
  
• Brazil – “Drex” (Digital Real): Brazil is poised to be a frontrunner in CBDC implementation in the Americas. The Central Bank of Brazil began a Drex pilot (the local nickname for its digital real) in 2023, after years of research. The pilot has focused on tokenized deposits and wholesale financial operations initially, but with an eye toward a unified retail and wholesale CBDC ecosystem.
  
  Brazil’s goal was to launch Drex by late 2024; however, regulatory frameworks were still being finalized, so an open trial was set for end-2024 and a full public launch is expected by early 2025. Officials anticipate that Drex will be widely adopted, building on Brazil’s success with its instant payments system (Pix) and filling gaps in the digital economy (e.g. enabling smart contracts, streamlined large-value transactions, and financial inclusion for the underbanked). In short, Brazil’s CBDC program is in final pilot stage and represents one of the most advanced in the West.
  
• Russia – Digital Ruble: The Bank of Russia has made rapid strides toward a CBDC amid geopolitical urgency. A law enabling the digital ruble took effect in 2023, and a pilot with real consumers and merchants began that year in a limited capacity. As of mid-2024, Russia’s pilot was expanding: initially just one bank (VTB) facilitated retail CBDC payments in 11 cities, but the central bank planned to bring in major banks like Sberbank and others in a second phase.
  
  Early use cases have included purchases at certain gas stations, paying telecom bills, and even limited transit payments in Moscow. Russia aims for a broader domestic rollout by 2025, and critically, is preparing for cross-border CBDC transactions. By the second half of 2025, Russia intends to conduct its first international CBDC payments using the digital ruble – likely with “friendly” trading partners such as China or Belarus.
  
  This timeline reflects Russia’s strategic interest in CBDCs to bypass sanctions and reduce reliance on the US-dominated financial system. Russian officials acknowledge that few countries have made “serious progress” in CBDCs yet, but they cite China’s progress with the digital yuan as an encouraging example and hope to partner with China in early cross-border trials. (Notably, an experiment in 2022 already tested a digital ruble transfer to Belarus in a controlled setting.)
  
• Sweden – e-Krona: An early pioneer in CBDC exploration, Sweden’s Riksbank began researching a digital krona (e-krona) in the mid-2010s and launched a pilot simulation in 2020. The e-krona project has tested technical aspects (in a controlled environment with a blockchain-based system), but no public launch or pilot with consumers has occurred yet.
  
  As of 2025, Sweden remains in an extended research and proof-of-concept phase, evaluating policy implications and technology for a potential retail CBDC. The project is noteworthy historically (given Sweden’s very low cash usage prompting early interest in CBDC), but it has progressed cautiously. No decision to issue an e-krona has been made, so Sweden’s status is “pilot/research” stage rather than implementation.

(Many other countries are also experimenting with retail CBDCs at various scales. For example, Ghana and South Africa have run limited pilots for retail CBDCs in Africa, and Thailand and South Korea have conducted technical trials in Asia. However, the countries highlighted above are those with the most advanced or impactful retail CBDC efforts as of 2025.)

Research & Development Stage (Retail CBDCs)

While the leaders above are piloting or launching CBDCs, most other central banks – including those of major economies – remain in the research or development phase for retail CBDCs. For instance:

• Euro Area (European Central Bank – Digital Euro): The ECB is in the late stages of investigating a digital euro, but has not yet issued one. After a two-year investigation phase, the project entered a “preparation phase” in November 2023, focused on finalizing design and technical requirements for a potential retail CBDC across the 20-country euro zone.
  
  This preparation phase runs until October 2025, when the ECB’s Governing Council will decide on whether to proceed to actually launch a digital euro. That decision will depend partly on the EU passing necessary legislation to govern the digital euro’s use.
  
  In the meantime, the ECB has been prototyping, consulting stakeholders, and even piloting certain aspects (for example, working with banks and fintechs on innovative use cases and offline payment functionality). The strategic importance of the project is high – European leaders view a digital euro as a way to bolster the euro’s role globally and ensure monetary sovereignty in a world where digital currencies (including foreign CBDCs or private stablecoins) could otherwise dominate.
  
  If the green light is given in late 2025, a digital euro could be developed and potentially rolled out in the later 2020s, but as of July 2025 it remains in an advanced design stage (not yet in public use).
  
• United Kingdom (Bank of England – “digital pound”): The UK is exploring a retail CBDC (dubbed by media as “Britcoin” or simply digital pound), but progress is still in early development stage. In early 2023, HM Treasury and the Bank of England published a consultation paper on the digital pound’s potential design and implications.
  
  As of 2025, the Bank of England has set up a development unit and is working through design questions (such as wallet infrastructure, privacy safeguards, and the role of intermediaries), but no pilot has been launched yet. The earliest decision on issuing a UK CBDC is expected around 2025–2026, with any launch likely years later (around 2030) if approved. Thus, the UK remains in the exploratory phase, ensuring readiness but taking a cautious approach similar to many of its G7 peers.
  
• United States (Federal Reserve – digital dollar): The U.S. stands out as unusual among major economies in that it has paused work on a retail CBDC at the policy level. In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order halting any development of a retail digital dollar, making the U.S. the only major country to formally stop a retail CBDC project.
  
  Prior to this, the Federal Reserve had conducted research and technology experiments (like the hypothetical “FedCoin” concepts and a money-like token research at regional Fed banks), but no official pilot was ever launched. The current stance (as of mid-2025) is that the U.S. government is not pursuing a retail CBDC, due to concerns over privacy, financial stability, and political opposition.
  
  That said, the Federal Reserve continues to study and engage in CBDC-related experiments on the wholesale side (see next section), and U.S. officials keep a close eye on global CBDC developments that could affect the dollar’s international dominance. Notably, the U.S. Treasury and Fed emphasize improving the existing digital payments (like FedNow instant payments launched in 2023) as an alternative path for now.
  
• Other Developed Economies: Many other advanced economies are likewise in research or proof-of-concept stages for retail CBDCs. Japan launched a small-scale CBDC pilot in April 2023 to test the technical feasibility of a digital yen, but the Bank of Japan has not committed to issuing one and has no timeline for a decision (the pilot is purely exploratory).
  
  Canada conducted extensive research (Project Jasper) and even ran experiments in collaboration with other central banks, but as of late 2024 the Bank of Canada announced it was pausing active development of a retail CBDC absent clear necessity. Australia ran a pilot (“eAUD”) in 2023 focusing on specific use cases with industry participants, but the Reserve Bank of Australia has since indicated it is prioritizing wholesale CBDC applications over any near-term retail CBDC.
  
  In sum, most G7/G20 economies (outside China and India) are moving slowly on retail CBDCs – intensively researching design and policy issues, but generally holding off on deployment until there is stronger justification or public demand.
  

Table 1: Selected Retail CBDC Initiatives (Status as of July 2025)

Wholesale CBDCs and Cross-Border Initiatives

Beyond retail-focused projects, many central banks are also working on wholesale CBDCs – digital currencies used among banks and financial institutions for settlements, often with the goal of improving large-value transfers and cross-border payments.

In fact, wholesale CBDC development has become a multinational effort: central banks are collaborating on experimental platforms to make international transactions faster, cheaper, and less reliant on the U.S. dollar system. Since 2022, the number of multi-country cross-border CBDC projects has more than doubled, reaching at least 13 such initiatives by 2025. We highlight a few leading examples:

• mBridge (Multiple CBDC Bridge): This is one of the largest cross-border CBDC pilot platforms to date. Originally a collaboration under the BIS Innovation Hub (as “Project Inthanon-LionRock” and later expanded), Project mBridge connects the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia on a common distributed ledger platform.
  
  The goal is to allow banks in each jurisdiction to transact with each other using tokenized central bank funds (wholesale CBDCs) in real time, reducing the frictions of correspondent banking. In 2022, mBridge’s pilot facilitated a limited set of test transactions (valued at around $22 million) among participating commercial banks.
  
  As of 2025, mBridge is continuing under the management of its member central banks (without direct BIS involvement) and moving toward a production-ready stage.This project is closely watched as a blueprint for a future network of interoperable CBDCs in Asia and the Middle East.
  
• Project Dunbar: Spearheaded by the BIS Innovation Hub with central banks of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Africa, Project Dunbar (completed in 2022) successfully developed prototypes for a shared platform on which multiple wholesale CBDCs could be issued and transacted among participating banks.
  
  It demonstrated that institutions in different countries could use their respective digital currencies on a single network for cross-border settlements. While Dunbar was a proof-of-concept, the lessons from it are feeding into further work in those jurisdictions (for example, Australia in 2023 announced it would conduct follow-up wholesale CBDC trials on both public and private blockchains.
  
• Project Jura: A 2021 experiment by the central banks of France and Switzerland (in cooperation with BIS) that tested the use of wholesale CBDCs for cross-border settlement of securities. In Project Jura, a digital euro and a digital Swiss franc were used to settle a tokenized French government bond between banks.
  
  The experiment was deemed successful, showing that delivery-vs-payment with CBDCs can work across currencies. France’s central bank has conducted several such wholesale pilots, underscoring Europe’s interest in using CBDCs not just for retail but potentially to streamline large-value payments and securities settlement in the future.
  
• Project Icebreaker: An initiative by the BIS with the central banks of Sweden, Norway, and Israel (completed in early 2023) exploring cross-border interoperability of retail CBDCs. The Icebreaker project tested a model where different countries’ retail CBDC systems could be linked via a “hub” that automatically converted currencies through an intermediary currency for cross-border peer-to-peer payments.
  
  This innovative approach aimed to enable fast, low-cost remittances between jurisdictions using CBDCs, even without each pair of countries establishing bilateral integration. The project was a short pilot, but it provided a model for how smaller retail CBDC systems might connect internationally in the future.
  
• Other Notable Collaborations: Project Aber (2019) between Saudi Arabia and the UAE was one of the first successful cross-border CBDC pilots, using a shared digital ledger for interbank settlement between the two countries. Project Helvetia in Switzerland (BIS and Swiss National Bank) tested integrating wholesale CBDC with existing payment systems and securities infrastructure.
  
  The U.S. Federal Reserve has also run cross-border payment experiments: the New York Fed’s Project Cedar (Phase I in 2022) showed a foreign exchange transaction using hypothetical wholesale CBDCs could settle in seconds, and in Phase II (2023) the Fed collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to connect their experimental ledgers (Project Cedar x Ubin+) for 24/7 cross-currency settlement. These efforts highlight that even jurisdictions reticent about retail CBDCs (like the U.S.) see potential in wholesale CBDCs to modernize global transfers.

Importantly, geopolitical and economic factors are driving interest in wholesale and cross-border CBDCs. The sanctions on Russia and associated tensions have prompted many countries to seek alternative payment rails not controlled by any single country. CBDC networks could offer a way to conduct trade in local currencies or new digital corridors. Additionally, a desire to reduce dependency on the dollar for international trade is leading emerging economies (as well as China) to explore cross-border CBDC arrangements.

According to the Atlantic Council, since the Russia-Ukraine war and G7 sanctions, there’s been an upsurge in cross-border CBDC projects, as nations respond to the need for more resilient payment infrastructure. At the same time, central banks are carefully studying interoperability and standards so that future CBDCs (retail or wholesale) can work together globally – an area where organizations like the BIS and IMF are actively involved in 2025.

It’s worth noting that no wholesale CBDC has yet been permanently “launched” for everyday interbank use in a major jurisdiction – all are pilots or prototypes. However, the BIS predicts that several wholesale CBDCs could be in live circulation by the end of the decade, potentially around 9 by 2030, by one estimate).

In the meantime, the ongoing pilots and collaborations are steadily advancing the technology and proving out concepts. The most advanced countries in wholesale CBDC experimentation include China (through the mBridge project and others), Singapore, France, Switzerland, UAE/Saudi Arabia, and the United States (in research mode) – these nations and their partners are effectively setting the stage for the next generation of cross-border payment systems, even though none has yet “flipped the switch” on a production wholesale CBDC.

Each country’s approach and stage may differ, but the overall trajectory is clear: CBDC development is accelerating worldwide, and many significant milestones have been achieved between 2020 and 2025.

The coming years will likely see more pilots graduating to full launches (particularly retail CBDCs in large emerging markets), and increased convergence on standards that will allow these new digital currencies to interoperate across borders. The race for the future of money is well underway, with 2025 marking the transition from experimentation to initial implementation in multiple leading jurisdictions.