Australia to pilot stablecoins and CBDCs with leading banks
Date: 2025-07-10 Author: Henry Casey Categories: IN WORLD
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has announced the start of a pilot phase that will test various forms of digital assets, including stablecoins and a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). The trials will be part of a larger project called Acacia, which is being developed with the participation of the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre consortium. This alliance includes key players in the financial and academic sectors of Australia.
The project envisages cooperation between a wide range of partners - from local fintech startups to the largest commercial banks. Participants will work with tokenized bank deposits and stablecoins, testing their effectiveness for the wholesale financial market. In total, 24 use cases are planned to be implemented as part of the experiment: 19 will operate with real cash flows, and five will simulate transactions.
Particular attention will be paid to various types of assets - from debt obligations to carbon credits and fixed-income instruments. This should show how new digital solutions can integrate into the existing financial system and improve its efficiency.
The entire testing cycle is expected to take about six months, and preliminary findings will be published in early 2026. The results will help determine further steps towards the full implementation of CBDC and tokenized assets at the national level.
It is worth noting that similar initiatives are currently actively developing in other countries. Thus, the Central Bank of Russia recently confirmed plans to launch a digital ruble - the largest Russian banks will have to connect support for the new currency by early September 2026. In addition, retail chains and financial operators will be required to accept the digital ruble in settlements.
At the same time, China continues to expand the scope of application of the digital yuan. Recently, it was announced that an international center for operations with the digital yuan was created, which is designed to strengthen the position of the national currency at the global level.
Australia is thus joining the global race to digitalise finance, testing the possibilities of using stablecoins and CBDCs in real-life conditions. If the Acacia project proves highly effective and secure, the country will be able to create a more flexible and modern financial infrastructure, opening the way for new products and services based on blockchain and tokenisation.
