This masterclass offers an in-depth exploration of the Digital Lilangeni project of the Central Bank of Eswatini. The project aimed to assess the feasibility, potential benefits, and risks of introducing a CBDC in Eswatini. Participants will gain insights into the strategic motivations behind the project, its design principles, and the technological and legal implications.

The session will cover:

• Key findings from diagnostic study
• Design considerations including interoperability, privacy, and financial inclusion
• Lessons learned
• Next steps

This session is designed for central bankers, fintech professionals, researchers, and policymakers interested in understanding the practical realities of CBDC exploration and the value of evidence-based decision-making in digital finance

Until recently central banks have been running their retail CB+DC projects along separate tracks. There is now a trend towards merging the tracks, as more central banks look to wholesale CB+DC-backed tokenized deposits, and maybe even stablecoins, to achieve their digital retail payment-focused objectives. This session will start by recapping recent developments in the retail CB+DC space. It will then explore how the lines between retail and wholesale CB+DC are blurring, and assess potential future central bank-backed digital currency configurations.

With the completion of the ECCB's 3-year CBDC pilot and the benefit of post-pilot analysis, how has our approach to, and thinking about, CBDCs evolved. Specifically; how have we levied the lessons of the pilot in clarifying a role for CBDCs as part of an integrated and innovative payment system in the ECCU.

Movmint is best known for designing, supporting and powering The Bahamian Sand Dollar, the world’s first and only live retail Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Stanley Yong, Chief Product Officer of Movmint, will facilitate a workshop on the platforming capability of the Sand Dollar ecosystem and, in particular, a technical approach to integration. The platform is a modular and flexible CBDC ecosystem, with tools to support consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and regulators, built to support real time payments at a national scale.

SICPA opens the CBDC Academy with “Protecting Sovereignty: From Ink to Inclusive Digital Cash”, setting the tone for the conference. With over 70 years securing value for central banks in 130+ countries, SICPA positions CBDC not as a payment upgrade but as a sovereign decision. The session introduces SICPA Digital Cash, a retail CBDC solution designed for inclusion: offline, privacy-preserving, and with no additional device needed. SICPA will demonstrate how sovereign digital cash bridges physical and digital, reinforcing trust and resilience. Participants leave with a clear view of SICPA as a long-term, central-bank-aligned partner.

The digital currency landscape is becoming increasingly diverse — spanning CBDCs, stablecoins, tokenised deposits, e-money tokens, and commercial bank money tokens. These forms of money are not competing in isolation; they are converging into a complex, interdependent ecosystem that will reshape the financial system over the next decade.

For both central banks and commercial institutions, the strategic challenge is no longer about whether to engage — but how to align, sequence, and scale their efforts to establish a framework for a future state that is continually evolving.

In this session, we will explore:

• The emerging architecture of digital currency
• The role and impact of AI on the digital currency landscape
• Legislation and the impact on payment system
• Use cases and future drivers and trends for digital currencies
• A framework to help banks to map priorities, identify drivers, and define a vision around digital currency strategies.

After years of exploration and proof-of-concepts, we’re now entering the “money time” for digital currency initiatives, such as stablecoins and CBDCs to deliver tangible results. Amid growing competition for digital money many central banks face urgent need to move beyond the initial exploration into live, operational systems that can modernize payments and enhance financial inclusion.

Oracle is actively involved in global CBDC initiatives for both wholesale as well as retail digital currencies. The session will showcase a CBDC project implementation using Oracle Blockchain Platform and Oracle’s extended CBDC Sandbox providing a robust, scalable, interoperable, and secure infrastructure to meet central banks’ needs.  We’ll review architectures for advanced use cases ranging from cross-border wholesale payments to scalable domestic retail CBDC deployments. We will also explore best practices for designing, deploying and managing CBDC projects, based on Oracle’s engagement with CBDC pilots, long history in financial services and many large-scale payments projects.

This session is for decision-makers and technical leads in financial institutions and central banks who want to move beyond the experimental phase to build a sustainable future with digital assets and CBDCs.

In this exclusive panel, the deputy governors of several central bank share their views on digital currencies. Gain unique perspectives on digital currency design, policy considerations, and the role of digital currencies in shaping the future financial system. Learn about the challenges, opportunities, and potential implications of CBDCs and stablecoins in the financial sector. Hear from these high-level decision-makers their strategic vision and practical insights that drive the digital currency agenda.

This presentation will cover Atlantic Council's research on CBDCs, stablecoins and crypto and raise emerging issues as regulations are created.

Having embarked on its CBDC initiative in 2020 as part of the country’s digital transformation, Jamaica has had mixed experiences. While there have been successes in some areas, implementation challenges remain, requiring agile solutions from the Bank of Jamaica.

This presentation will focus on the motivations behind the launch of a CBDC in Armenia. In particular, it will examine the challenges of cross-border payments, as Armenian banks currently face high costs, slow processing times, and limited operating hours for international transactions. A DLT-based CBDC could improve cross-border payments by enabling faster, cheaper, and 24/7 transactions through automation and enhanced international cooperation. Additionally, offline payment capabilities could expand financial access, especially in areas with limited internet connectivity or banking infrastructure. This would allow individuals to conduct transactions without needing to travel long distances or rely on internet access, thereby improving convenience and promoting financial inclusion.

This presentation will provide an overview of the Bank of England Digital Pound Lab. The Lab is an experimental platform for industry to test use cases and understand potential business models for a digital pound. The session will cover the objectives and approach for the Lab, as well as the Lab's infrastructure and capabilities.

The CB+DC Conference recognises outstanding achievements in the realm of digital currency in 5 different categories.

1. Pioneering CBDC Initiative

2. Best Stablecoin / Tokenized Asset Project

3. Digital Currency Infrastructure 

4. Focused Innovation

5. Best Academic Research

Crunchfish respects the roles in the payment ecosystem by allowing banks and payment application providers to enable end-users to MAKE payments with lsyer-2 wallets, while central banks with CBDC payment networks deliver the ability to RECEIVE and settle layer-2 payments This natural separation of responsibilities creates resilence, scalability, interoperability, flexibility and healthy competition within the payment ecosystem. Digital IOUs in a patented Reserve, Pay, and Settlement approach generalize how both card payments and smart contracts work. Welcome to explore how this groundbreaking innovation enables resilient payments seamlessly in modular and future-ready CBDC system.

The digital currency debate has often been framed as a zero-sum contest—CBDCs vs. Stablecoins vs. Deposit tokens. But in practice, the monetary future is shaping up to be “all of the above.” Each form of digital money is advancing rapidly, backed by distinct stakeholder groups, use cases, and regulatory frameworks. This presentation reframes the conversation: from competition to coexistence.

We’ll highlight the distinct benefits each form of money offers, and the unique strengths they bring to the broader financial ecosystem—sovereign trust and monetary authority in CBDCs; regulatory familiarity, fractional reserve backing, and credit creation in deposit tokens; cross-border utility, and portability in reserve-backed stablecoins, and with money market fund–backed stablecoins, the additional benefits of institutional-grade liquidity and capital efficiency.

We’ll also explore how to architect a unified, multi-layered digital money ecosystem, integrating these instruments through a shared settlement layer such as a unified ledger approach supporting independence through cross-ledger interoperability.  We’ll also show how Oracle digital assets solutions can augment Central Bank capabilities leveraging CBDCs programmability for targeted interventions, ensure universal access without dependency on specific financial institution, while aligning with regulators’ priorities: financial stability, monetary policy control, AML compliance, and system resilience. Ultimately, this is not a technology race—it’s a design challenge. One that demands realism and interoperability, while incorporating continuous compliance monitoring and embedded supervision across all layers of the digital currency stack.

One of the most frequently asked questions about Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) is: “Why do we need them?” In other words, in a world where cash payments are increasingly being replaced—not just complemented—by a wide range of electronic payment methods, from payment cards to instant and mobile solutions, what is the rationale for introducing CBDCs? The core argument I want to make is that there is a gap between physical cash and private electronic payment systems—a space that CBDCs are uniquely positioned to fill. Since the nature and size of this gap vary across different monetary jurisdictions, the role and design of CBDCs will inevitably differ as well. They will need to adapt to local conditions in order to effectively bridge these gaps and meet the specific requirements for successful implementation.

In the evolving landscape of CBDCs and stablecoins, trusted digital identities are critical to ensuring secure, compliant, and inclusive ecosystems. This presentation explores how robust identity infrastructure underpins effective KYC/AML, protects against fraud, and more importantly, safeguards privacy of individuals. For central and retail banks, digital identity isn’t just a support function—it’s foundational to the credibility, scalability, and adoption of both sovereign and privately issued digital currencies.

This panel discussion explores the evolving landscape of digital currencies and the critical role of regulation and supervision in ensuring financial stability and consumer protection. The panelists will examine questions around compliance, innovation, and international cooperation. Attendees will gain insight into emerging regulatory frameworks and their implications for the future of digital finance.

This panel will discuss how digital currencies will influence the way payments will be made in the future. What are the pros & cons, the risks & opportunities?

This panel delves into how digital currencies are reshaping global payment systems, from reducing transaction costs to enabling real-time cross-border transfers. The panelists will discuss the opportunities and disruptions brought about by stablecoins, tokenization, CBDCs. The conversation will explore the integration of digital currencies into existing payment infrastructures and their potential to enhance financial inclusion. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the technological, economic, and policy implications of this transformation.

This presentation will cover the Central Bank of the Bahamas' role in the SandDollar Ecosystem.

A wave of technological innovation is reshaping the financial system across Latin America and the Caribbean. Emerging solutions—from blockchain infrastructure and tokenized payments to stablecoins, open finance, and real-time cross-border payment rails—are unlocking new pathways to inclusion. Central bank digital currencies like the Sand Dollar, combined with regulatory sandboxes and digital ID systems, are helping reach unbanked populations, MSMEs, and vulnerable groups. Yet, despite this momentum, challenges remain around adoption, interoperability, and legal certainty. Tackling these barriers is essential to ensure the region builds a more inclusive, efficient, and integrated digital financial ecosystem.

Covering the global topic of CB+DCs, an overview on retail and wholesale applications is given. This includes specific insights into the Austrian market and views on the future outlook. Conclusions drawn from a recent paper are presented, as well as current research on consumer behaviour.

A core challenge for policymakers in the CBDC space and other digital asset projects is the alignment of technological capabilities with stringent compliance and governance requirements. Key questions arise: How can necessary controls be robustly implemented? How can confidentiality and privacy be ensured on a shared ledger while maintaining essential oversight?

This session addresses these challenges by presenting a modular, composable solution designed specifically to meet policy objectives. The architecture leverages available building blocks, such as secure and verifiable ledgers based on DLT and immutable database, an atomic transaction coordinator with AI-enhanced workflows, and advanced analytical capabilities leveraging advanced AI with multi-LLM integration. These core services are seamlessly integrated with pre-built, customizable application components, including smart contract templates and libraries, rich integration and workflow libraries, intuitive user interfaces, comprehensive analytics and reporting dashboards, and financial crime compliance using machine learning models.

This approach significantly reduces development complexity, using low-code development tooling for every component, from smart contracts to workflows, application UIs, and analytics. It empowers policymakers by enabling the rapid implementation of controls and providing transparent, auditable oversight capabilities. The session will expand on the available building blocks and demonstrate a practical use case, illustrating how these elements are used in practice. A quick overview of next steps, including expanding the use case and preparing for production deployment, will conclude the session.

The Breakout Session introduction will explore how CBDC (and sovereign tokenisation) can both reinforce national sovereignty and promote inclusion—if designed with these goals in mind. It frames the risks of dollarization, private digital currencies, uncontrolled token ecosystems, positioning SICPA as a sovereignty-first approach to inclusive digital cash.The introduction will open a dialogue on how central banks can retain control and protect currency’s role as a public good.

.

Following on from the ‘Trusted Digital Identities: The cornerstone of secure digital currency ecosystems” keynote, join us to learn more about our solution and see how our digital identity wallet is shaping a more inclusive and compliant payment ecosystem.

.

As the developers of the Bahamian Sand Dollar, Movmint are the inventors of the only uninterrupted CBDC in the world. Michael Dowling, CTO of Movmint, will workshop the interoperability of the Movmint ecosystem and how to best leverage the platform in the Bahamas and beyond for merchant services, central bank private clearing, lending, and more.

.

The workshop gives deep insight into the DELPHI initiative especially the technical setup and architecture.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) represents a new inflection point in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI). With capabilities to transform customer service, automate repetitive processes, power real time fraud detection, and use data to provide customer centric products, Gen AI’s potential to improve productivity, efficiency and risk management is immense. But alongside the opportunities, there are also risks such as AI enabled fraud that is difficult to identify, deep fakes that can lead to authentication failures or expanded cyber threat attack surfaces that can undermine integrity, trust and resilience of the broader financial ecosystem. Disruptions can also propagate quickly across borders and magnify systemic risks given that payment systems are deeply interconnected across borders. So as financial institutions embed Gen AI into core payment infrastructures, regulators face the challenge of how to encourage innovation while maintaining financial stability and trust in payment systems. The presentation will explore Gen AI’s applications across the payment value chain, the risks it introduces, and how these risks propagate—highlighting the need to harness its benefits without compromising financial stability.

As the developers of the Bahamian Sand Dollar, Movmint are the inventors, operators, and primary support partner of The Bahamian Sand Dollar— the world’s first retail Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). This global benchmark for digital currency operates amidst a tidal wave of momentum around full-reserve stablecoins. Movmint CEO Jesse Lund will discuss the future of CBDCs in the face of stablecoin legislation in the U.S., its impact on developing nations and around the world.

This presentation traces how different stablecoin types reshape four sovereignty pillars - Monetary, Payments, Regulatory and Digital - balancing gains in currency modernisation, cheaper cross-border payments and supervisory tech against challenges such as “digital dollarisation,” financial-stability run risk, regulatory arbitrage and cloud dependence. Framed by the EU’s MiCAR rule-set, the session closes with policy considerations for regulators.

Overview of stablecoin market structure and strategies of issuers, chains, banks, fintechs and nation states.

With the growing interest on stablecoins, deposit tokens and CBDCs, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan and MIT Digital Currency Initiative collaborated on the research and development of a prototype for payment tokens on EVM-based blockchains. This presentation will discuss key findings from the research, including the additional capabilities required in payment tokens to meet compliance and regulatory requirements, the gaps in existing token standards and the proposal of two new sets of capabilities to address these gaps. The presentation will also highlight challenges in current approach towards token standards, and why narrow composable standards would help drive convergence in the space.

Commercial Bank Money Token (CBMT) is a new form of money. Its economic underpinnings are identical to those of the commercial bank money currently in use. Technically, CBMT exists as a native token on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), which enables commercial bank money to benefit from the advantages of this technology. This talk explains why CBMT was designed, its key design principles and how it differs from a stablecoin. It also covers how corporates and commercial banks would use CBMT, and the current state of play. Finally, it briefly touches on the possibility of collaborating with CBDCs.

As digital currencies gain momentum, central banks face mounting pressure to innovate while safeguarding monetary sovereignty. In this keynote, Professor Pinar Ozcan explores the geopolitical and institutional dynamics shaping the rise of CBDCs and stablecoins—highlighting how power, trust, and infrastructure design influence the future of digital money. Drawing on research in fintech ecosystems and global regulation, the talk offers strategic insight for policymakers navigating this high-stakes transformation

As the world moves toward digital money, central banks must evolve their mandate to defend and enable sovereignty in the digital space. This speech will explore how SICPA’s 70-year legacy in safeguarding physical currency translates into digital solutions like inclusive, offline-capable CBDC. It will argue that the real issue is not technology but control: who governs the money of tomorrow? SICPA presents a long-term, sovereign-by-design alternative that supports national resilience and societal inclusion.

In an increasingly digital financial world, three contenders are shaping the future of money: Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), tokenized assets, and stablecoins. This panel brings together industry leaders, technologists, and policymakers to explore the strengths, limitations, and use cases of each. Are CBDCs the path to sovereign digital money? Will tokenized assets unlock new efficiencies in capital markets? Can stablecoins bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto? Join us for a lively debate on which digital currency model is best positioned to lead the next era of global finance.

As digital currencies—CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits—continue to evolve, the demand for seamless interoperability and globally recognized standards has become increasingly urgent.

This panel will explore the critical role of interoperability and standardization in fostering a cohesive digital currency ecosystem. It will examine the challenges and opportunities presented by fragmented infrastructures, differing technical protocols, and regulatory asymmetries across jurisdictions.

The panel will also highlight current efforts toward establishing technical and governance standards.

This presentation highlights the importance of offline CBDC functionality in achieving financial inclusion, particularly in underserved and remote communities, as well as disaster-affected areas with limited access to infrastructure. Beyond its technical value, this session explores how the introduction of offline capability would serve as a strategic driver of SandDollar adoption by increasing accessibility, trust, and usability.

Tokenization promises more open, efficient markets—but only if settlement infrastructure evolves in parallel. This speech examines the role of wholesale CBDCs in bridging today’s systems with tomorrow’s tokenized economy. It outlines how central banks can support innovation without compromising stability, through carefully designed and purpose-driven digital currency experiments.

In the fast evolving technological and regulatory landscape, it is important to keep one question that should remain core to the discussion: how CBDCs impact financial health through access and usage of financial services.

CBDCs, if inclusively designed, offer the potential to deliver fast, affordable, and secure financial services directly to individuals. Payments, programmability and other innovation build ups can bring about a new era of swift, customized and low-cost use cases.

Ecosystem design, regulatory alignment, public-private collaboration, and user-centric innovation must converge to ensure CBDCs serve the needs of the financially excluded and underserved not just the financially connected.

Learning from Rwanda’s journey of CBDC exploration, this session will engage on key considerations such as:

• How can CBDCs improve financial resilience and long-term well-being for individuals and small businesses?
• What technological and policy enablers are essential to reach the unserved and underserved?

How can programmability support targeted financial interventions?

As the digital currency landscape matures, stakeholders across the public and private sectors are grappling with what lies ahead. This forward-looking panel will examine various perspectives on the future trajectory of digital currencies, including CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits.

The discussion will explore key trends shaping the next phase of digital currency adoption, including regulatory convergence, technological innovation, cross-border collaboration, and evolving use cases in retail and wholesale finance. Panelists will reflect on lessons learned from recent pilot programs and policy developments, while identifying critical priorities for ensuring scalability, trust, and inclusivity.

This session aims to provide a holistic outlook on how digital currencies are likely to impact the global financial system, the strategic decisions ahead for both regulators and innovators, and the collective roadmap needed to foster a resilient, interoperable, and equitable digital financial future.

In this session, the Central Bank of The Bahamas will provide insights into the SandDollar Project, explain the main challenges, highlight what worked well, explain the main risks and how they were handled, and share how the project fared since its inception.

During the session, the attendees will have the chance to ask their most pressing questions and discuss their main concerns with representatives of the Central Bank of The Bahamas.