EMTECH,
an award-winning software company, and first-of-its-kind Modern Central Banking
Infrastructure provider, has announced the public release of its Central Bank
Digital Currency (CBDC) Innovation Kit for fintechs and financial service
providers looking to test new fintech solutions and business models with
Central Bank Digital Currency.
With
over 10 trillion of paper cash in circulation and over 93 percent of central
banks exploring and piloting CBDCs introducing a digital version of cash, the
CBDC Innovation Kit provides fintechs a set of tools with which to begin their
discovery of the possibilities of a digital cash infrastructure.
Leveraging
a public distributed ledger technology (Hedera Hashgraph) as a layer 1 protocol
and ERC-20 standard for tokenization, EMTECH’s simulated token called “Beyond
Cash” is used for the purpose of innovation projects with fintechs ecosystems.
The CBDC Innovation Kit makes BYDC accessible via developer-friendly APIs for a
“Bring Your Own App” ecosystem model and comes with pre-built dashboards for
users as they run their tests.
The
APIs allow a fintech company to embed BYDC wallets via their app, test various
types of transactions and pull wallet and transaction data from the ledger.
This is the company’s first CBDC offering to help Fintechs understand what’s in
it for them with CBDC.
“We’re extremely proud to officially
announce this flagship CBDC offering for fintechs. Our point of view has been
consistent: enabling central banks to safely deploy their CBDC as a digital
cash infrastructure, not just a software application can drive inclusion,
interoperability and resilience by embracing the growing fintech ecosystems.
From payments, savings to lending and
investments, from rideshares to remittances. Imagine if the US$10 trillion or
more of paper cash floating in the world was issued digitally, used, and
accounted for securely, in real time, and seamlessly. Imagine what fintech apps
could do for cash users.” said EMTECH Founder and CEO,
Carmelle Cadet.
“By creating a simulator with the
generic name “Beyond Cash” and pre-built APIs ready to use, we bring modern
central banking closer to fintech and we help our central bank clients
validate what’s possible as part of their exploration.”
“This is a first for EMTECH, and with
a beta launch earlier this year, we saw the interest from fintechs who signed
up for our Innovation Kit. Even without a live CBDC deployed, there’s a lot of
capacity to build on the fintech side as well. We are eager to help explore new
possibilities with CBDCs coming down the pipe. Those who get ahead of the curve
have much to gain,” said Tunji Odumuboni, Executive Director,
Africa at EMTECH.
CBDC
is objectively a hot topic in finance today. There are many questions and
theories on what CBDCs are and are not. In our design, we take seriously the
concerns on privacy and controls. By launching this innovation kit, we believe
we can help showcase how we’re designing for trust and adoption. Once
established, the industry can solve challenges for the billions of people out
of the banking system such as, lack of access to capital and high cost of cross-border payments. - Gbemi Munis, Director Of Product at Product.
Despite
their broad inclusion in Central Bank strategies, the impact of CBDC on
economic and financial systems remains relatively unknown. Introducing them
could present significant risks, such as issues with monetary policy transmission,
efficient functionality of payment systems, and overall financial stability. To
reduce these variables, Central Banks must understand the implications of
various CBDC configurations. CBDC’s Innovation Kit creates the opportunity for
fintech and other financial service providers to test those configurations in
their own app much faster and with little to no risk.