Thailand launches pilot for retail CBDC

Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri), Siam Commercial Bank and the Singapore-based payments provider 2C2P have joined the Bank of Thailand’s pilot project to launch a retail CBDC within a regulatory sandbox, as reported by Bangkok Post.

The digital currency will be tested in specially created apps by employees of the organisations and by several enterprises located near their headquarters.

The experiment will run until August, with up to 10,000 users participating.

Beyond payments for goods and services, another potential use case for the retail digital baht could be social benefit disbursements.

The Bank of Thailand described the project as a ‘pilot for learning’, not for a subsequent launch. The regulator has no official plans to launch a CBDC.

It was planned that its trials would be conducted from late 2022 to mid-2023. Going forward, Bank of Thailand Governor Setthaput Suthiwartnarueput said that the retail launch of the digital baht could be delayed by up to five years.

As previously reported, in May 2019 the central banks of Thailand and Hong Kong launched the Inthanon-LionRock project to study the use of wholesale CBDC in cross-border payments.

In 2021, the People’s Bank of China and the UAE central bank joined the participants.