Mastercard has concluded an experiment involving the wrapping of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on various blockchains.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the country’s Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre CBDC and Cuscal and Mintable participated in the trial, as announced on October 12.
Mastercard stated that the solution enabled a CBDC owner to purchase an Ethereum-listed nonfungible token (NFT) in a live environment. “The process ‘locked’ the required amount of pilot CBDC on the RBA’s pilot CBDC platform and minted an equivalent number of wrapped pilot CBDC tokens on Ethereum,” the payment processor wrote.
“A pre-requisite of the test transaction was that the Ethereum wallets of both the buyer and seller, as well as the NFT marketplace smart contract, were ‘allow-listed’ within the platform. With all other transfers of the wrapped pilot CBDC blocked, it successfully demonstrated the platform’s ability to implement controls – even on public blockchains.”
The solution employs Mastercard’s Multi Token Network, which was introduced in June 2023 and integrates blockchain with payment technology. Zack Burcks, Mintable’s CEO and founder, stated that:
“Together with Mastercard, we have identified a use case whereby digital currencies and NFTs can easily be linked, potentially stamping out fraud and theft, ending the loss of documentation and records, and unleashing new possibilities for commerce,”
The RBA has previously stated that a CBDC denominated in Australian dollars could facilitate complex payment arrangements and innovation in the finance sector that cannot be achieved with fiat currency. However, the central bank also stated that “more research” is needed to evaluate the benefits.