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So, what happened in open banking 2019? In Australia, open banking is finally launched; Payments NZ in New Zealand launches open banking APIs and ther NZ banks follow; Mexico continues to be the hot spot for LATAM; Brazil launches open banking model; Additional API offerings launched in Malaysia to further enrich the open banking market there; US banks begin conversations on open banking and to develop open banking 'like' APIs; the Central Bank of Nigeria places open banking on its Payments Vision Statement (PSV) 2030 to become the next EMEA country to implement open banking; and Bahrian makes claim to implementing open banking.

"Most central banks in LAC are analyzing the potential introduction of CBDCs, with some island nations having already issued their own. According to our survey with government officials in the region, half of the respondents were considering both retail (i.e., designed for the general public) and wholesale (i.e., intended for use by financial institutions) CBDC options."

The new Governor of the Bank of Mexico, Victoria Rodríguez Ceja, confirmed plans to release a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) during 2025. During a presentation to the Mexican Senate, the Governor said the first goal of its CBDC will be financial inclusion. It also wants to provide more fast payments options and ensure the economy is efficient and interoperable. The Governor said she's also keen to enable programmable money and promote innovation. https://www.banxico.org.mx/publications-and-press/speeches/%7BD7EB1919-DE55-95ED-B0F7-0887AE4C6843%7D.pdf

Banco Central de la República Argentina published a paper that summarizes the design and architecture alternatives under study to minimize some of the risks of issuing a retail CBDC. There are no indications in the paper that the central bank has plans for deeper exploration.

Banco de la República (Banrep) published a working paper that concluded that assessed the need for and potential consequences of introducing a retail CBDC in Colombia. Based on an extensive review of the CBDC literature, it concluded that there is not currently a convincing case, but this conclusion does not exclude the possibility that one of these might justify the issuance of the retail CBDC in the future. That could be the case under a sudden popularization of unregulated stablecoins or a retail CBDC issued by another country, which could reduce the transmission of monetary policy, lead to a fragmentation of the payment system, and represent potential risks to financial stability. However, the paper stressed that the central bank has not taken a final decision on CBDC issuance, instead aiming to roll out a fast payment system by 2025.

he Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are joining forces to foster innovation and financial inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean by exploring and developing technology that can help to modernise the region's financial systems. The first collaboration between the two institutions will be on Project FuSSE (Fully Scalable Settlement Engine, pronounced as fyooz). Project FuSSE aims to design and test backend functionality that can be adapted to multiple types of infrastructures, allowing them to process a continuously growing number of transactions. FuSSE aims to test highly scalable systems in three dimensions: the number of transactions, the types of assets and the number of participants. The technology could support payment systems, security settlement systems or even central bank digital currencies.

The president of Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), Roberto Campos Neto reportedly introduced some novel ideas that the central bank has for a possible CBDC, including the integration of the digital real with traditional and decentralized financial structures and institutions. He also showed off a "super app" that will allow customers to hold stablecoins and the CBDC, and showcased the connection the system will have with the already available PIX payments network.

Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) reportedly aims to launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2024. It will be designed to encourage banks to tokenize their assets, so it sounds like it's being designed for niche cases, rather than general purpose usage.The huge popularity of the BCB's PIX payment system might argue for such an approach. Its use now surpasses transactions with credit and debit cards in the country.

The Colombian government is reportedly planning to launch a digital currency to curb tax evasion and enhance the traceability of citizens' transactions, according to Luis Carlos Reyes, head of Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales (DIAN), the country's tax authority.

The Governor of Colombia's Banco de la República, Leonardo Villar, reportedly confirmed that the central bank is evaluating the possibility of issuing central banks digital currency (CBDC). No details were provided. [Read more at El Colombiano] A few days ago, Luis Carlos Reyes, head of Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales (DIAN), the country's tax authority, reportedly said that the government was planning to issue a digital currency to curb tax evasion. It's not clear whether these two stories are related.

Given the high interest in participating in the survey on CBDC, originally planned for the months of June and July 2022, the Central Bank of Chile (BCCh) has extended the submission deadline to October 30.

"The digital euro will need safeguards in place to stop governments from snooping on people's online spending habits, according to the architect of one of the world's first central bank-backed digital currency."

The Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) announced the short list of eight projects selected in the 2022 Laboratory of Financial and Technological (LIFT). One of them is a proposal to convert a stablecoin on the Celo blockchain into Real Digital, studying the interoperability between the public blockchain that runs on the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and the central bank digital currency (CBDC), in addition to the possible interoperability with Pix.

Tether is launching a stablecoin pegged to the Mexican Peso (MXN₮) with initial blockchain support to include Ethereum, Tron, and Polygon. MXN₮ will join three other fiat-currency pegged tokens Tether has in the market: the U.S. dollar-pegged USD₮, the Euro-pegged EUR₮, and the offshore Chinese Yuan-pegged CNH₮. This marks Tether's entrance into Latin America that will provide a testing ground for onboarding new users in the Latin American market and will pave the way for future fiat-pegged currencies in the region to be launched.

The Bank of Mexico reportedly plans to launch a two-tier ("intermediated") CBDC by 2024. As part of the roll-out, commercial banks expect interoperability capacity to increase through the Interbank Electronic Payment System (SPEI), and that a CBDC should in principle seek greater inclusion and lower transaction costs.

Banco Central de Chile Governor Rosanna Costa reportedly said that Chile's central bank digital currency (CBDC) would need to accept offline payments, but added that no final decision had been taken on whether to issue a digital form of the Chilean peso. She said that an offline system should "allow the authorities to trace the transaction afterwards," while safeguarding personal data, adding that the technology to do so was "not necessarily efficient today."

Banco Central de Chile said that although a central bank digital currency (CBDC) could improve payment systems and mitigate risks, a deeper cost and benefit analysis is required and it would publish a new report towards the end of the year. The central bank said CBDC would allow the benefits associated with digital transformation to be enhanced, while mitigating some of its risks, adding that the currency could help develop a more competitive, resilient and inclusive payment system. However, a final decision on this requires a more in-depth analysis of its costs and benefits, as well as a more complete comparison with other policy alternatives that address the same challenges.

"The Central Bank of Paraguay, through Resolution No. 7/21, approved the regulations of the Working Group on Digital Currency of the Central Bank of Paraguay (CBDC, for its acronym in English), in order to monitor the different international initiatives on CBDC, as well as analyzing the implications of an eventual implementation of some type of CBDC by the BCP. The motivation to explore a CBDC is its use as a means of payment. A digital currency issued by the BCP could provide complementary money to the public, adhering to the development of the national payment system, as long as the security of the transactions is preserved."

Banco Central do Brasil is reportedly pushing out its CBDC pilot work from end-2022 to 2023. This is due to a workers' strike at the central bank, which impacted the original schedule.

The Banco Central del Uruguay's Adolfo Sarmiento writes about seven lessons from the 2017-18 e-Peso CBDC pilot, highlighting that CBDC choices are based not only on technical considerations but also on money use culture. This implies a holistic assessment of the payment environment and a clear understanding of the cultural implications of a change that will be incremental but not reversible. This implies that research on CBDC must concern idiosyncratic aspects: economy organization, historical aspects, and even social implications of money.