Would a Retail Central Bank Digital Currency Achieve Its Intended Purpose?

Abstract

The issuance of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) has three purposes: (1) providing the public with a digital central bank money, (2) improving the resilience of digital payments, and (3) promoting diversity and sovereignty in payment systems. The issuance of a retail CBDC is not trivial as it entails a transfer of credit risk from commercial banks to the central bank. To control this transfer of risk, the central bank could either limit the demand for CBDC by charging an unattractive interest rate to it or limit its supply by imposing an individual quantity ceiling on its holdings. These mechanisms—as Gresham’s law teaches us—would undermine the use of CBDC as a medium of exchange, as people would hoard their CBDC free of credit risk and spend their risky bank deposits instead. Retail CBDC could thus miss its intended purpose.