Central Bank of Brazil Picks Nubank, Visa, and 12 Others For CBDC Pilot

Banco Central de Brasil recently announced it had selected 14 parties for participation in the South American country’s CBDC pilot. According to the Central Bank’s website. the pilot is, at this stage, aimed at testing the benefits of a digital real in an entirely simulated environment.

Banco Central de Brasil to Integrate Winning Proposal by Mid-June

The Central Bank of Brazil announced it had selected 14 parties interested in participating in a pilot project for the country’s CBDC—the digital real. The selection features various well-known names from multiple industries including Microsoft, Visa, and the Buffett-backed Nubank.

According to the website of Banco Central de Brasil, a total of 36 proposals were submitted for the pilot. Additionally, the selected participants will be incorporated into the pilot by the middle of June.

Brazil’s Central Bank describes the pilot as an experiment to test the benefits of “the programmability benefits of a multi-asset Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform for operations with tokenized assets.” It will be entirely conducted in a simulated environment and will not involve transactions with real value.

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Is Latin America a Blockchain Hub?

South America has been highly receptive to digital assets—central-bank digital currencies and other cryptocurrencies—for years. While El Salvador, the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, is perhaps the most famous example for the crypto-friendly stance, it is far from the only one. 

Along with joining the race to develop a CBDC in September 2022, Brazil has been actively cooperating with various firms—traditional and from the cryptocurrency industry—for several years. For example, Binance and Mastercard started offering the former’s crypto debit card at the beginning of 2023.

Despite this general trend, there has recently been a shift in attitude in certain parts of the continent. Argentina recently started pushing back against cryptocurrencies as its Central Bank forbade payment service providers from offering digital assets transactions.

When will Brazil’s CBDC go live? Tell us what you think in the comments below.