Banks of Italy, Korea will share CBDC knowledge under new memorandum

Both central banks are exploring the impact a CBDC could have on an economy

share

The Bank of Italy and the Bank of Korea signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Tuesday.

The MOU will allow for the two central banks to share “knowledge and information on the topics of ICT technologies in support of real time settlement systems and the central bank digital currency (CBDC),” according to a press release from the Bank of Italy. 

This isn’t the first time that the two have collaborated with each other on CBDCs. Back in June, both the banks of Korea and Italy partnered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the International Monetary Fund on a paper focused on purpose-bound money. PBM allows money to be programmed to be used for a specific purpose. 

The central banks sought to ensure that PBM wouldn’t come “at the expense of digital money’s ability to serve as a medium of exchange.”

Read more: Singapore plots ‘live’ wholesale CBDC pilot for next year

The Bank of Korea announced in October that it would test a wholesale CBDC in partnership with the Bank of International Settlements. The goal, the Bank of Korea said at the time, is to see if wholesale CBDCs are suitable to be used as a settlement asset for tokenized bank deposits. 

“This test is expected to lay the foundation for implementing a variety of innovative payment and financial services that are differentiated from existing services by presenting a pilot model of future currency infrastructure that reflects the development of IT technology,” a translated version of the press release said.

The pilot program does not signify that Korea plans to implement a CBDC, however. The purpose is just to explore CBDC design models to find one that’s possibly suitable, the Bank of Korea added.

Korea wrapped its first phase of a CBDC research simulation project back in January 2022. 

The Bank of Italy published a paper back in July focusing on the impacts that a CBDC could have on “choices of residents in a small open economy.”

It sought to “analyze the consequences on the banking system and on economic activity of an increase in the preference for the foreign CBDC, to the detriment of that for domestic currency and deposits.”

The central bank also launched an initiative to help financial institutions explore tokenized assets, tapping Polygon Labs and Fireblocks back in July. The project will help institutions experiment with security tokens through transactions using DeFi in a regulated environment.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Ethena Labs is leaping from its flagship synthetic dollar, USDe, to a full product suite—USDtb, iUSDe, and the Arbitrum-based Converge Chain—designed to marry crypto-native yields with TradFi-grade compliance. Our analysis shows how expanding into CME, ETF options, and tokenized Treasuries could lift protocol revenue from sub-$500 million in a bear case to several billion dollars if favorable regulation and institutional adoption align.

article-image

The L1’s Interwoven Stack is the most opinionated tech stack yet

article-image

Bitcoin is still rising, 11 years after the documentary film The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin

article-image

Arch Labs CEO told Blockworks that the team plans to launch a native token, but declined to give details

article-image

CEO Mike Silagadze tells Blockworks that the US is “open for business” and why its DeFi bank offering is the first of many

article-image

Doing one thing well and leaving everything else out is often what disruptive technologies do best