Sweden moving forward in e-krona CBDC trials

Sweden has made a number of strides toward its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC, called the e-krona. The Sveriges Riksbank, the country’s central bank, now looks to experiment with the asset using a non-simulated party. 

As reported by Reuters, Riksbank detailed on Friday via a statement: “The e-krona pilot is therefore moving on from only having simulated participants to cooperation with external participants in the test environment.” The experimentation will involve participation between Riksbank and Handelsbanken, a retail bank chain based in Sweden.

In January, Riksbank elaborated that its e-krona proof-of-concept harnesses Corda, a distributed ledger technology, or DLT, solution from R3. Sweden has been on the CBDC path for over a year. April brought news that the country had finished the beginning portion of its CBDC pilot.

The Riksbank statement reported on by Reuters also included Handelsbanken noting: “For Handelsbanken, the project means the opportunity to participate in what may be among the first digital central bank-issued money in the world to be available to the public.”

CBDCs were a hot topic in 2020, with countries continuing their pursuits in 2021. China has largely led the charge in terms of CBDC ambition, although the Bahamas burst on the scene last fall with the first CBDC launch, calling its currency the Sand Dollar. Just recently, Lael Brainard, the governor of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed the importance of a CBDC in terms of the country’s position as the world’s reserve currency.