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Ripple announced the 15 winners of Phase I of its CBDC Innovate Challenge who will move forward to Phase II, where they will begin building, refining, and developing their applications. The goal of CBDC Innovate 2023 is to build or update a fintech or payments solution utilizing Ripple's CBDC solutions. In Phase I applicants ideated applications on the public XRP Ledger. In Phase II the 15 finalists, including WhisperCash, will build on Ripple's Private CBDC Platform.

I moderated a couple of sessions on offline central bank digital currency (CBDC) at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) DC³ From Cryptocurrencies to CBDCs​​ Conference on January 27, 2023. The first session was on the importance of offline payments for CBDCs and financial inclusion at which cases were presented by Lars Hupel (G+D), Razvan Dragomirescu (WhisperCash), Joachim Samuelsson (Crunchfish) and Jerome Ajdenbaum (IDEMIA). The second session was a deep dive into offline CBDC implementation and risk management presented by Lauren Del Giudice (IDEMIA) and Stuart Smith (VISA). [Both sessions were recorded and are available at the ITU]

The Bank of Canada (BoC)published an article that considers the pros and cons  of offline central bank digital currency (CBDC). An offline CBDC would allows users to transact while none of them are connected to the internet and could complement bank notes. A balance must be struck between compliance, security requirements and user needs, for example, by limits on holdings, transaction amounts and the duration of offline functionality. The article mentions that, while some central banks have deployed offline devices as part of pilots, no commercial, turn-key solutions are available to implement lengthy and indeterminate ("extended") offline functionality. I don't know what is meant by "commercial turnkey solutions" but a number of production-ready solutions offer extended offline functionality, such as those of Crunchfish, G+D, IDEMIA and WhisperCash. Also, those firms would disagree with the article's assertion that "adopting a security posture in terms of limits, controls and functionality, where risks are sufficiently mitigated, is still a challenge for technology available today"! But otherwise it's good to see a G20 central bank advocating for offline CBDC functionality, which I view as essential to successful CBDC take-up in many countries.

Central Bank of Kenya Governor Patrick Njoroge has reportedly warned that lack of access to smartphones by more than half of mobile users in the country will hamper the rollout of its proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) that requires access to the Internet. Of course readers of this blog know that the Governor has been misinformed, as there are a number of available CBDC platforms that do not require smartphones, including those of Celo, Roberto Giori and WhisperCash.