Out of the 24 applications received over the past year, Cecabank, Abanca, and Adhara Blockchain have been selected.
After releasing an open request for partners to take part in central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiments, Spain’s central bank, Banco de España, has selected its partners one year later.
The central bank announced its collaboration with Cecabank, Abanca, and Adhara Blockchain in a resolution that was issued on January 3.
The wholesale CBDC pilot programme will run for the next six months and will simulate how interbank payments would be processed and settled using a single tokenized wholesale CBDC and by exchanging several wholesale CBDCs issued by various central banks.
The Cecabank-Abanca partnership is involved in another trial where a simulated tokenized bond will be settled using the wholesale CBDC.
Out of the 24 applications that the central bank received in the previous year, three companies were selected. Although Adhara Blockchain has its headquarters in the UK, Cecabank and Abanca are both Spanish banks.
Because it was openly declared to be separate from the digital euro initiative, which, if it were to be realised, would encompass all of the eurozone’s economies, the Spanish CBDC programme is unique. Six months ahead of schedule, the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation declared it would put into effect the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation of the European Union.
The Bank of Spain released a document outlining the characteristics and applications of the digital euro in October.
The digital euro hasn’t garnered much interest from Spaniards themselves. Sixty-five percent of participants in an October survey stated they would not use the pan-European CBDC to supplement their usual payment methods.