What Is a CBDC? Australia 2026 Guide

What is a CBDC?

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a digital form of money, denominated in a national currency, that is issued as a direct liability of the central bank. That is how the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) define it in their 2023 CBDC pilot report.

That can sound like the money you already have. Most Australian dollars are already digital, as bank balances. The difference is who owes you the money:

• Banknotes are issued by the RBA. They are public money, but physical.
• Bank deposits are issued by commercial banks and are a liability of those banks. The RBA and Treasury note in their September 2026 update that, while Australian banks are highly regulated and safe, deposits carry a small amount of credit risk because they depend on the issuing bank.
• A CBDC would be public money, like a banknote, but digital.

If you want the background on government-issued money in general, our what is fiat currency guide explains how the Australian dollar works and briefly introduces the digital-dollar question. This guide goes deeper on CBDCs themselves.

Retail vs wholesale CBDC

“CBDC” covers two quite different ideas. The RBA’s About Tokenised Money page separates them like this:

• Retail CBDC. Tokenised money issued by the RBA that households and businesses could use for online and in-person payments. The RBA calls it, for the most part, a digital version of cash, which could be accessed through a phone app or digital wallet.
• Wholesale CBDC. Tokenised money issued by the RBA but accessible only to a limited range of wholesale market participants, such as financial institutions and other large institutions, for use in wholesale payment and settlement systems. The RBA sometimes calls this “tokenised central bank reserves” and says it has not made any decision on issuing it.

Eligible financial institutions already hold a form of digital central bank money: balances in exchange settlement accounts (ESAs) at the RBA, which, as an RBA September 2024 speech explains, help facilitate the settlement of payments. A wholesale CBDC would be a tokenised version of that idea, designed to live on the same programmable platforms as tokenised assets such as bonds. Our real-world assets guide explains tokenisation in more detail.

The distinction matters because the two can have very different futures. In Australia, the retail idea has been set aside for now, while the wholesale idea is an active area of RBA work.

How a CBDC could work

There is no single design. These are features the RBA has described or tested, all framed as possibilities rather than plans:

• One-for-one value. The RBA says a retail CBDC would be convertible one-for-one with banknotes and bank deposits, so A$1 of CBDC could always be swapped for A$1 in cash or A$1 in a bank account.
• Distributed through intermediaries. In the eAUD pilot, the RBA issued pilot CBDC to participants that held an ESA, or through an authorised distributor, and those businesses distributed it to their end users.
• Wallets. The RBA’s retail CBDC FAQs say a retail CBDC could be used through a phone app, much like cards in a digital wallet.
• Programmability. Many pilot use cases explored programmable payments, where money moves automatically when agreed conditions are met.
• Atomic settlement. Settling a tokenised asset and its payment in a single, linked step, so one side cannot complete without the other.
• Offline payments. Some pilot use cases tested making electronic payments when a merchant has lost power or telecommunications, for example after a natural disaster.

A CBDC does not have to run on a blockchain. The eAUD pilot used a private, permissioned platform based on Ethereum, but the RBA’s pilot report noted this did not mean Ethereum would necessarily be the right choice for a production system. For how shared ledgers work, see our what is blockchain guide.

CBDCs and privacy

Privacy is one of the most debated questions about retail CBDCs, because money issued by a central bank raises the question of who can see how it is spent. Cash leaves little record; card and bank payments are already recorded by private institutions. A CBDC could, in principle, be designed anywhere along that spectrum.

What the RBA has said:

• Privacy law would apply. The RBA’s FAQs say a retail CBDC would be designed in accordance with Australia’s privacy laws, so a government agency would need legal authority or your permission to view your data. The RBA also says it would explore how to ensure the highest level of privacy that could reasonably be offered.
• The pilot kept identity off the platform. In the eAUD pilot, the identity of end users was held by each participating business, with no identity information stored on the pilot CBDC platform. Balances and transactions had a pseudonymous level of privacy, similar to many public blockchains. The RBA notes privacy was not a research focus of that project.
• Australians were sceptical. In the public consultation behind the September 2026 update, privacy concerns were mostly about identity theft and the secure storage of personal data rather than anonymity, and most participants did not believe a retail CBDC would provide greater privacy or security than existing digital payments.

Useful questions to ask about any CBDC proposal, in Australia or overseas: who holds identity data, who can see transaction data and under what legal authority, whether small payments could be more private than large ones, and whether there are limits on how the money can be programmed.

CBDC vs Bitcoin

CBDCs and Bitcoin are both digital, and both can use ledger technology, but they are close to opposites in design:

• Issuer. A CBDC would be issued by a central bank. Bitcoin has no issuer; new coins are created by the network’s rules and miners.
• Value. A CBDC would be worth exactly one unit of the national currency. The RBA and Treasury describe unbacked crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether as privately issued digital assets whose value can fluctuate significantly over short periods, and that are not backed by a central bank or guaranteed by any government.
• Control. A CBDC would be run by, or on behalf of, the central bank. In the eAUD pilot, the RBA could mint, redeem and burn pilot CBDC and could pause or shut down the platform. Bitcoin is maintained by a decentralised network with no central operator.
• Supply. A CBDC’s supply would be set by the central bank, like other forms of Australian dollars. Bitcoin’s rules cap supply at 21 million coins.
• Legal status. A retail CBDC would be government money in Australian dollars. Bitcoin is a crypto asset that Australians can buy and hold, but it is not Australian currency.

Our what is Bitcoin guide explains how Bitcoin works in more detail.

CBDC vs stablecoins and deposit tokens

Stablecoins are the closest relative of a CBDC in the crypto world, because both aim to hold a steady value against a currency. The key difference is again who stands behind them:

• Stablecoins are tokenised money issued by private sector entities and designed to keep a stable value through backing by assets, according to the RBA. They are a claim on a private issuer, so their stability depends on that issuer’s reserves and redemption arrangements. Our what is a stablecoin guide explains how pegs work and how they can break, and our USDC guide looks at one major example.
• Tokenised deposits are digital representations of commercial bank deposits, where the token is a claim on the bank’s balance sheet. Project Acacia found they could play a role in tokenised finance by combining the technology of tokenised money with the trust of the existing banking system.
• A CBDC would be a claim on the central bank itself.

These forms are not necessarily rivals. In the eAUD pilot, one use case demonstrated a stablecoin backed by pilot CBDC, and Project Acacia tested CBDC-backed stablecoins alongside other settlement options. The RBA’s September 2026 update called it an open question whether and how stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits will feature in the retail payment system of the future.

Side-by-side comparison

Australia’s eAUD pilot (2022–2023)

Australia’s best-known CBDC experiment was a joint RBA and DFCRC research project. The September 2022 project white paper said the pilot CBDC would be called the eAUD, a liability of the RBA denominated in Australian dollars, with one cent as the smallest unit and no interest paid.

According to the RBA’s August 2023 project report and media release of 23 August 2023:

• It was real money, in a sandbox. Unlike earlier proof-of-concept work, the pilot CBDC was a real legal claim on the RBA, which was obliged to redeem it at par at the end of the project.
• Industry chose the use cases. Around 110 use case submissions were received for the live pilot, and 16 were selected. The pilot ran from March to July 2023.
• It was small. The RBA issued close to $550,000 in pilot CBDC. All of it was redeemed and the platform was shut down.
• What was tested. Use cases included offline payments, programmable payments and the tokenisation of assets such as Australian carbon credit units, NSW biodiversity credits and supplier invoices, with settlement in pilot CBDC.
• What it found. The use cases highlighted areas where a CBDC could improve the payments system, and also raised legal, regulatory, technical and operational issues that needed further research.

Project Acacia and wholesale CBDC (2024–2026)

Project Acacia built on the eAUD pilot but focused on wholesale markets. The RBA’s 18 May 2026 media release says:

• The project was led by the RBA and DFCRC with industry participants, supported by ASIC, APRA and the Australian Treasury.
• Industry participants developed and tested 20 wholesale tokenised asset market use cases across a range of asset classes.
• Transactions were settled using several forms of money: RBA exchange settlement account balances, a pilot wholesale CBDC, tokenised commercial bank deposits and stablecoins.
• The project found tokenisation has the potential to enhance the efficiency, functionality and resilience of Australia’s wholesale financial markets, while identifying challenges to scaling that need more work.
• The DFCRC described the issuance of pilot wholesale CBDC onto both public and private distributed ledger infrastructure, for research purposes, as a world first.

The report set out a follow-on program, including exploring a regulatory sandbox for digital financial market infrastructure, considering government issuance of tokenised bonds, continued industry work on interoperable bank deposit tokens, and RBA consultation on adapting its settlement infrastructure “alongside continued exploration of wCBDC”.

As part of that program, on 3 September 2026 the RBA launched a consultation on the role of its settlement system, RITS, in a tokenised ecosystem, open until 30 October 2026. The RBA’s current initiatives page tracks this work.

Will Australia issue a retail CBDC?

Not at this stage. On 3 September 2026 the RBA and Treasury published Retail Central Bank Digital Currency in the Australian Context: An Update. It concludes that Australia’s retail payment system is serving households and businesses well and that there is currently no clear public interest case for a retail CBDC, reaffirming their 2024 joint paper.

The update’s reasoning includes:

• Public indifference. In a consultation run for the RBA by Verian Group, around 30 per cent of participants were indifferent and about 40 per cent liked the idea in principle, but generally without seeing an immediate need. Among those with strong views, more than twice as many said a retail CBDC was “definitely not for me” as said they “would love it”.
• Slowing global momentum. The update says research and development in retail CBDC has slowed globally, and that the main objectives in places still progressing programs, such as China and the euro area, are not currently relevant to Australia.
• No currency-substitution threat. It found no developments suggesting Australia needs a retail CBDC to protect confidence in domestic money or to counter large-scale moves into foreign-currency stablecoins.
• Cash still matters. Cash use has stabilised in recent years after a long decline, and participants valued it as a simple option and an essential back-up.

The RBA’s FAQs add that no decision has been made, that the RBA and Treasury will keep studying the policy issues, and that any decision to introduce a retail CBDC would be made by the Australian Government. This guide does not predict whether or when that might change.

What it means for you

• Nothing changes today. Your bank account, cards and cash work as before. There is no RBA-issued retail digital dollar to sign up for.
• Be wary of “official digital dollar” offers. Because there is no retail CBDC in Australia, any app, token or message claiming to sell or give you an official RBA digital dollar should be treated with great suspicion. Our crypto scams guide covers common tactics.
• Know which money you are holding. Bank deposits, stablecoins and crypto assets carry different risks because they are claims on different parties, or on nobody.
• Go to the source. CBDCs attract strong opinions online. The RBA’s own pages, linked throughout this guide, are the primary record of what Australia has and has not done.

Sources used in this guide

All Australian facts in this guide come from Reserve Bank of Australia publications: the About Tokenised Money page, the retail CBDC FAQs, the September 2026 retail CBDC update, the eAUD white paper and 2023 pilot report, and RBA media releases on Project Acacia and the RITS consultation.

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