Brazil's central bank has picked 16 proposals - from firms including Nubank, Microsoft, Visa and SETL - for the pilot phase of its Drex CBDC project.
In brief:
-Brazil has been working on a digital real project for several years ahead of a planned 2024 launch.
-Last week, the central bank gave the currency a name - Drex.
-Among them is a consortium of Banco Bradesco, interbank clearing house Nuclea, and blockchain outfit SETL. Another proposal comes from Nubank, while Microsoft is involved in three efforts and Visa is working with XP.
What does this mean?
The bank says that this use case allows testing to focus on privacy, as it promotes the exchange of information between the various platform participants, and also tests the programmability of the offered services and their interoperability.
