Wholesale CBDCs represent a transformative opportunity for financial market infrastructures. Central banks are actively evaluating their potential to enhance operational efficiency, accelerate settlement processes, and strengthen systemic security. A rigorous assessment is critical to determine how these digital assets can optimize financial workflows while mitigating inherent risks in the sector.
The collaboration between Banco de España and Minsait has focused on evaluating the integration of a wholesale CBDC with the settlement of native financial asset tokens on a unified DLT platform. This initiative ensures atomic settlement and explores the specific implementation details of a wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) and its interactions with the various stakeholders involved in the asset settlement process.
Throughout the document, key use cases for wCBDC are analyzed, with special emphasis on:
The study addresses the technical challenges associated with its implementation in wholesale financial environments.
Based on the results of the experiment, this report synthesizes the findings to assess the feasibility of integrating wCBDCs into existing wholesale payment infrastructures. Key insights confirm operational viability while identifying broader opportunities for innovation — notably, the use of MiCA-compliant tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), categorized as Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs), as programmable collateral in automated settlement systems. Such applications could redefine efficiency
Download the report and discover how a wCBDC could transform the financial ecosystem. in regulated financial markets
