The Central Bank of Uzbekistan, in collaboration with Singapore's Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN) and London's analytical center OMFIF, has prepared a report assessing the feasibility of issuing a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC). This digital currency is intended for interbank settlements, not for general public use.
The report, titled 'Uzbekistan's Path to Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency: Prerequisites, Implications, and Trade-offs,' analyzes the potential role of a wholesale digital sum in the future development of Uzbekistan's financial and payment infrastructure. The report's preface emphasizes that the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan is considering this possibility as part of developing the national financial system, but the study is analytical and does not determine decisions on issuing or implementing such a currency.
The report's authors explain the focus of the study on wholesale rather than retail digital currency. They point out that Uzbekistan already has a developed cash system, a modern card infrastructure, and an operational instant payment system with plans for further expansion. Consequently, the population's payment needs are met, and assessing the marginal benefit of retail CBDC falls outside the scope of this study.
One of the key potential applications of a wholesale digital sum is eliminating settlement risk in Uzbekistan's domestic capital market. Currently, the country's capital market is undergoing reforms, and the National Agency for Advanced Projects (NAPP), together with the Central Bank, oversees a regulatory sandbox for stablecoins covering crypto asset trading and the tokenization of traditional securities.
Currently, settlements for transactions in Uzbekistan's capital market take one to two days depending on the asset class, and brokers form guarantee funds to cover counterparty default risk. The report's authors argue that these costs can be eliminated by settling on distributed ledgers. However, the report notes that digital currency is not the only way to achieve error-free settlements. Another option is synchronizing existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems with transactions on distributed ledgers. The German Bundesbank followed this approach by testing a 'trigger solution' within the European Central Bank's project in 2024, and the UK is expected to follow this path.
According to the authors, synchronization is generally cheaper to develop and does not require 24/7 operation of the payment system. However, it creates risks of operational dependence on two systems and does not provide the same flexibility for programmable payments as native digital currency. The report also compares traditional central bank reserves, synchronization solutions, tokenized deposits, national currency stablecoins, and the wholesale digital sum across four criteria: finality of settlement and risk reduction, efficiency for tokenized finance, operational resilience, and financial stability. The authors conclude that the wholesale digital sum shows strong results where native blockchain clearing, 24/7 operation, or enhanced resilience is valued, but it is not strictly necessary to meet the country's domestic payment needs.
The report also examines the interaction between the wholesale digital sum and stablecoins denominated in the national currency. Their reserves can be exchanged for wCBDC through a liquidity pool, which could enhance the reliability of their backing. As an indicator of potential demand, the report cites data from the TBC Digital transaction in February 2026, when about 4 trillion sums were moved on the secondary market, as well as the peak money market volume of about 256 trillion sums ($20.9 billion) in the third quarter of 2025.
Furthermore, the report considers a scenario where banks tokenize their own deposits, similar to the GBTD pilot project, previously known as the Regulated Liability Network, in the UK. Under this model, the wholesale digital sum could be used for final interbank settlement between tokenized deposits.
The report notes that the issuance of wCBDC will affect the money supply structure, partially replacing traditional central bank reserves. However, citing International Monetary Fund research, it states that if the digital currency had the same regulatory status, remuneration, and access conditions as regular reserves, this substitution would likely not affect short-term interest rates.
For system access, the authors propose a three-tiered model: participants holding reserve accounts at the Central Bank; licensed exchanges and digital asset service providers; and payment service providers who would have access to wallets without direct access to reserve accounts.
The report also investigates risks to the payment infrastructure associated with so-called Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)—actors capable of compromising access to payment systems or their integrity. As an example of vulnerability in centralized messaging systems like SWIFT, the authors cite the 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist, which they claim was carried out by an APT group with limited resources compared to major states.
The authors note that reducing dependence on such centralized nodes is one reason for the European Central Bank's 'digital euro' project, which is largely driven by the EU's desire to reduce reliance on Mastercard and Visa card networks.
A separate chapter is dedicated to cross-border payments. According to data presented in the report, personal remittances to Uzbekistan reached $18.9 billion in 2025, equivalent to approximately 18% of the country's GDP, compared to $14.8 billion in 2024. Citing World Bank data from 2021—the latest available in the report—the authors indicate that the average cost of sending $200 to Uzbekistan is about 2.1–2.4%, significantly lower than the global average of 6.5%.
The authors note that about 90% of global foreign exchange transactions are somehow linked to the US dollar. Although Uzbekistan can conduct direct settlements in Chinese yuan and Kazakh tenge, most of its trade is still conducted through the intermediation of the dollar. The report examines international projects aimed at reducing this dependence, including China's mBridge project involving China, Hong Kong, Thailand, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Project Agora.
According to the report, none of Uzbekistan's top 10 trading partners are among the mBridge observers. The authors also note that some observers who do not issue their own CBDCs allow their commercial banks to hold digital currencies issued by participating countries. This can increase the efficiency of cross-border settlements but may also increase the use of foreign currency in the observer's economy, creating what the report describes as a 'yuanization' risk. The report separately mentions the Cedar Project—a joint initiative by the New York Federal Reserve and the Singapore Monetary Authority. It showed that wholesale digital currencies on distributed ledgers can improve currency liquidity by using a bridge currency between low-liquidity currency pairs.
The Dunbar Project is also cited as a benchmark for expanding cooperation. An alternative to issuing a national digital currency for cross-border payments is the BIS Innovation Hub's Nexus Project, which develops a standardized gateway to connect national instant payment systems. Singapore and Thailand have already adopted this approach, directly linking their instant payment systems.
The report also discusses the potential development of bilateral relations with Kazakhstan. According to the report, settlements between the sum and the tenge still rely on the SWIFT messaging system and take several days. Launching the digital sum will allow Uzbekistan to interact with Kazakhstan's digital tenge 'on equal terms.'
The authors also point to the spread of dollar-denominated stablecoins as a new channel of dollarization, as such instruments are often easier to obtain than bank accounts in dollars. The report notes that several central banks, including the Bank of Ghana, are considering retail CBDCs specifically to compete with dollar stablecoins in their economies.
The report proposes quantitative models to assess the economic viability of implementing a wholesale digital sum for both domestic and cross-border use separately. These models account for the market share transferred to the new platform, the cost of liquidity frozen to cover settlement risk, losses from failed transactions, and operating costs for maintaining the new infrastructure. For the cross-border scenario, they additionally consider savings on correspondent banking fees and the release of capital locked in nostro accounts.
The authors define several qualitative triggers for starting work on the digital sum: sustained growth of the capital market, the development of sum-denominated stablecoins, interest from Uzbek banks in deposit tokenization, and the need to improve cross-border payments.
The report offers a 24-month roadmap for the Central Bank to implement the wholesale digital sum, divided into three stages. The research phase will include forming internal and international working groups, defining technical requirements, assessing macroeconomic consequences, and preparing a legal opinion. The experimental phase involves technical integration and launching internal and cross-border sandboxes with a limited number of participants. The final scaling phase will involve gradually opening access to the system to a wider range of market participants within a licensing model.
According to the report, by mid-2026, 146 countries and currency unions, representing over 98% of global GDP, were studying central bank digital currencies in some form, compared to 87 jurisdictions in May 2022. Seventy-seven of them reached an advanced stage of development, piloting, or launch. At the same time, only three countries—The Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria—have fully and unequivocally launched retail CBDCs. The report notes that several developed economies, including Canada, Australia, Norway, and Thailand, have suspended or reduced work on retail CBDCs. It is also stated that the United States has legislatively prohibited the Federal Reserve from issuing, piloting, or even studying a retail digital currency.
However, the global focus of CBDC development has shifted towards wholesale and cross-border solutions. Currently, thirteen wholesale cross-border digital currency projects are underway worldwide, more than double the number of such initiatives before 2022. China's e-CNY remains the largest active pilot project globally, with over 3.48 billion transactions worth about 16.7 trillion yuan, or approximately $2.3 trillion, processed since November 2025. According to the report, the mBridge platform processed about $55.5 billion in over 4,000 transactions, with about 95% of the settlement volume being in digital yuan. Other national programs mentioned in the report include the Hong Kong Ensemble project and the parallel e-HKD+ program, which test, among other things, settlements using tokenized deposits.
