Countries with most research into retail consumer CBDC 2021-2023
India ranked as the main country worldwide in terms of how far developed its retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) were, as of November 2023. This is according to a top 10 that is released once every year, tracking the development of CBDC across countries based on a development index. In earlier years, China, Nigeria and the Eastern Caribbean show up. The source left these out in the 2023 release, however, as these coins were already live or very close to being live. Note that the figures provided here are for retail CBDC, which can be held and used by both consumers and companies as a substitute for paper money or physical coins: Retail CBDC is essentially a digital substitute for fiat currency. This is different from developments found in interbank CBDC - which concerns cryptocurrencies used by financial institutions for interbank payments and financial settlement processes.