A quiet revolution in money is accelerating. According to the Bank for International Settlements’ April 2026 survey, 134 countries — representing 98% of global GDP — are now in some active stage of central bank digital currency development, up from 114 in 2023 and just 35 in 2020. For the first time, more nations have a live or advanced-pilot CBDC than do not.
The catalyst is familiar: cash is dying. In Sweden, physical currency now accounts for fewer than 6% of transactions. In South Korea, that figure is 9%. In the United Kingdom, the proportion of payments made in cash has fallen to around 12%, according to UK Finance data — a steep decline from over 60% just a decade ago, driven by contactless payments, mobile banking apps, and the lingering behavioural shifts from the Covid-19 pandemic. The world’s payment infrastructure is going digital whether central banks participate or not. The question is who controls the rails.
China Sets the Pace, But Not the Standard
China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) remains the world’s most advanced major-economy CBDC by transaction volume. The People’s Bank of China reported in March 2026 that e-CNY cumulative transactions have surpassed ¥8 trillion (approximately £870 billion), with active wallets exceeding 500 million. The currency has been integrated into salary disbursement for government employees in 15 provinces, tax refund payments, and social welfare transfers.
Crucially, China has been using e-CNY as a tool for internationalising the renminbi beyond SWIFT. Cross-border pilot programmes with Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE under the mBridge platform — a BIS-backed multi-CBDC corridor — processed over $22 billion in transactions in 2025. Western financial policymakers are watching closely, though few are yet willing to use the word “threat” publicly.
China’s approach has nonetheless created something of an anti-template for Western democracies. The e-CNY’s architecture gives the People’s Bank of China granular visibility into individual transactions and the technical ability to impose spending restrictions or expiration dates on balances — features that have become a flashpoint in Western CBDC debates.
The UK’s Digital Pound: Cautious Progress
The Bank of England and HM Treasury have been consulting on a potential retail CBDC — informally referred to as the “digital pound” — since 2021. A consultation document published in 2023 set out a technology-neutral design that prioritised privacy protections and stipulated that the digital pound would not pay interest, so as to avoid drawing deposits away from commercial banks. The Bank of England has stressed that any decision to issue a digital pound would be subject to parliamentary approval.
Progress has been deliberate rather than urgent. The Bank has not set a launch date, and senior Monetary Policy Committee members have expressed scepticism about the necessity of a retail CBDC given the UK’s already highly efficient payment infrastructure. The Payment Systems Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority are engaged in parallel workstreams on digital money more broadly, including the regulation of stablecoins under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023.
Europe and the US: Different Clocks, Same Race
The European Central Bank’s digital euro project entered its formal preparation phase in late 2023 and has since moved to large-scale technical testing with major eurozone banks. ECB President Christine Lagarde has repeatedly stated a target launch window of 2027–2028, contingent on legislative approval from the European Parliament, which remains fractious on privacy provisions.
The digital euro’s design prioritises offline functionality — allowing transactions without internet access, a feature designed to reassure rural and elderly populations — and a monthly holding cap of €3,000 per individual to prevent bank disintermediation. Commercial banks, which lobbied heavily against uncapped designs, have largely welcomed the capped model.
In the United States, the trajectory is less linear. The Federal Reserve’s FedNow instant payment system, launched in 2023, has been deliberately framed as distinct from a retail CBDC. Congressional opposition to a digital dollar — particularly from Republican lawmakers citing surveillance concerns — has stalled formal legislation. The Trump administration’s January 2026 executive order explicitly banned the Federal Reserve from developing or piloting a retail CBDC, citing threats to “financial privacy and individual liberty.”
Emerging Markets Are Moving Fastest
The most consequential CBDC activity, in terms of population reach, may be happening outside the G7. India’s digital rupee pilot has expanded to over 5 million users across 15 banks and is targeting full retail rollout by fiscal year 2027. Nigeria’s eNaira, one of the world’s first live retail CBDCs when it launched in 2021, has struggled with adoption but recently surged after the Central Bank of Nigeria made it mandatory for certain government disbursements.
Brazil’s DREX wholesale CBDC framework, designed primarily for interbank settlement and tokenised asset issuance, is considered a technical benchmark. It enables programmable money use cases — automated escrow, conditional payments, DeFi-compatible settlement — that are driving significant interest from the country’s large fintech sector.
Privacy, Power, and the Future of Money
The CBDC debate ultimately circles back to a question that is as political as it is technical: who should have visibility into how citizens spend their money?
Privacy advocates and civil liberties organisations across jurisdictions have raised alarms about the surveillance architecture built into most CBDC designs. The BIS has published design principles calling for “appropriate” privacy protections, but implementation is left to national authorities — and the definitions vary enormously. In the UK, any digital pound would need to navigate robust data protection requirements under the UK GDPR and the Human Rights Act, making the privacy architecture a central rather than peripheral concern.
“A CBDC issued by an authoritarian government and one issued under a robust constitutional framework are fundamentally different instruments even if the underlying technology is similar,” said Dr Esther Kim, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Centre. “The architecture encodes the politics.”
What is clear is that the era of purely physical, anonymous currency is ending. The digital money race is not about whether — it is about who, how, and on whose terms.
Sources: Bank for International Settlements, European Central Bank, People’s Bank of China, Bank of England, HM Treasury, UK Finance, Atlantic Council.
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