Besides the largest local crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin, the pilot of the digital real CBDC in Brazil also involves Mastercard

The central bank of Brazil authorized the largest local crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, to participate in the pilot project of the national central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Except for Mercado Bitcoin, the project participants include?Mastercard, broker Genial, registrar Cerc and financial software fintech Sinqia. In addition, the Brazilian central bank allowed state-owned Brazilian bank Caixa, card provider Elo and Microsoft?to participate in its CBDC pilot.

Earlier, Mercado Bitcoin was not admitted to the dedicated project consortium since it didn’t have a proper license to access Brazil’s national financial network. However, on June 2, the situation changed, and?Mercado Bitcoin received the payment institution license from the central bank.

The CBDC is expected to roll out by 2024. The pilot aims to test the issuance of the CBDC and treasury bills as well as explore the technical aspects of the network and the governance model of distributed ledger technology (DLT).

This May, Central Bank of Brazil announced it was ready to start trials of its proposed CBDC across various use cases including in-store and offline NFC payments. Before that, in March, BCB tested the blockchain-enabled platform supporting the centralized digital token.

We shall remind you that IMF earlier reported Brazil was among?the top 20 countries leading the global adoption of crypto assets in 2022. Besides, IMF research found that most central banks in LAC are considering the potential introduction of CBDCs. Moreover, half of the respondents found both retail and wholesale CBDC options promising.