The Central Bank of the Philippines has published its Project Agila report identifying the settlement of financial securities and large-value cross-border payments as potential applications for a wholesale central bank digital currency, or wCBDC. The report frames wCBDC as a digital form of central bank money for use by commercial banks and other financial institutions, with the potential to improve payments infrastructure efficiency and support new financial services. Much like the current Real-Time Gross Settlement system, a wCBDC would allow each bank to maintain an account with the central bank, with balances credited or debited based on interbank transactions. The report highlights distributed ledger technology as the main differentiator, allowing greater automation, faster processing and lower transaction costs. For financial securities transactions, the central bank said wCBDC could materially reduce settlement risk by narrowing the gap between trade execution and final settlement. Learnings from Project Agila will inform the Central Bank of the Philippines' CBDC Roadmap, which is intended to set the central bank's strategic direction for exploring and developing CBDC use cases.
Central Bank of the Philippines2026-07-01
Central Bank of the Philippines identifies securities settlement and large value cross border payments as wholesale CBDC use cases
The Central Bank of the Philippines' Project Agila report identifies financial securities settlement and large-value cross-border payments as potential use cases for a wholesale central bank digital currency. It says a wCBDC could use distributed ledger technology to automate interbank settlement, speed processing, lower costs and reduce settlement risk in securities transactions. The report's findings will feed into the central bank's CBDC Roadmap.