ANZ has entered into a collaboration with Grollo Carbon Ventures (GCV) to successfully trade Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), demonstrating one of the innovative applications for an Australian Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
In March, the Reserve Bank of Australia initiated 14 pilot projects aimed at exploring potential use cases for a CBDC. Within this framework, ANZ and GCV focused on testing the tokenization of real-world, nature-based assets, beginning with ACCUs. Through this initiative, ANZ tokenized existing ACCUs and introduced its stablecoin, A$DC, enabling GCV to acquire these tokenized credits. The settlement process took place in near real-time through ANZ’s smart contracts.
The transaction was executed on a public, permissionless blockchain, utilizing a pilot CBDC to facilitate the issuance of ANZ’s dollar-backed stablecoin. According to Nigel Dobson, the lead for banking services at ANZ, “Tokenization in carbon markets holds the potential to enhance efficiency and transparency, mitigate risk, and maintain the distinct characteristics of underlying projects, thereby encouraging investment in climate solutions.”
In addition to this pilot, ANZ is exploring further applications of CBDC by collaborating with two universities to test offline CBDC payments via smart cards, enabling users to load funds and utilize them similarly to physical cash. Another pilot will assess the practicality and effectiveness of using CBDC for employer superannuation contributions as an alternative to conventional payment methods. Additionally, a fourth project will focus on the issuance of CBDC in compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.
For those interested in discovering more about payment innovations, registration is now open for the NextGen Nordics event, scheduled for April 25, 2023.