Australians wouldn’t value retail CBDC for its privacy or safety, RBA finds

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) considered the perceived worth of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) among the general public. They investigated how much people would be prepared to pay for accessing CBDC through a digital wallet, as well as the potential privacy advantages that using a CBDC could provide.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) imagined its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as “a secure digital currency offering more privacy than traditional bank deposits.” To gauge the public’s valuation of goods without markets, they employed a discrete choice experiment.

Australians wouldn’t value retail CBDC for its privacy or safety, RBA finds

The study examined charges for privacy and security features costing up to 5 Australian dollars (AUD), roughly equivalent to 3 US dollars. It mentioned that annually paying 5 AUD by users would result in approximately 100 million AUD in fees, an insignificant amount compared to other factors impacting the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) issuance decision.

A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) offers enhanced safety because it eliminates the credit risk associated with traditional bank deposits. banks may collapse, posing a risk to deposit holders. In 2022 data, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) revealed that individuals would actually pay a small fee (less than one Australian dollar per year) rather than maintaining an account with the RBA instead of a commercial bank.

“This is consistent with bank deposits in Australia already being perceived as a safe form of money, and physical cash issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia continuing to be available as an alternative option.”

An RBA report acknowledged the potential influence of public opposition on their study results regarding Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). In contrast to the survey’s assumption, many existing and experimental CBDCs employ intermediaries like banks for account management and service provision. Some policymakers plan to create an intermediated CBDC with diverse privacy settings.

Australians wouldn’t value retail CBDC for its privacy or safety, RBA finds

Privacy data were much more complex. Previous research has suggested that people highly value privacy, but frequently forgo privacy measures in practice, making its value hard to assess. The results obtained showed a strong preference for sharing information with the financial crime authority Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre and a commercial bank, which was worth about 5 AUD more than allowing data sharing with the RBA.

To put it simply, the research results indicate that there is limited public enthusiasm for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) from the RBA. The Reserve Bank of Australia has conducted multiple investigations into CBDCs before, and most of these studies ended with favorable outcomes. However, these past studies primarily focused on wholesale use cases.

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2024-04-11 23:51