CBDC: Expanding Financial Inclusion or Deepening the Divide? Exploring Design Choices that Could Make a Difference
Abstract
This 2023 report uniquely focuses on users, especially society’s most vulnerable, and is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the MIT Digital Currency Initiative and Maiden Labs, funded by the Gates Foundation. Findings are drawn from:
-design research to identify the important open technical design choices and ways forward for CBDC;
-infrastructure research on existing money technologies to understand the broader public-private dynamics in which CBDC financial inclusion issues are centered;
-and fieldwork to understand the financial experiences of people in four low- and middle-income countries (India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico) and the ways existing money technologies are failing them or helping them flourish.
For policymakers, technologists, financial-inclusion advocates, and social scientists interested in CBDCs’ risks and opportunities, this report's insights include concrete areas for focus, ideas for design directions, and recommendations for future research. It is a resource for anyone wishing to understand how we can design a digital currency that expands financial inclusion and operates in the public interest, rather than one that exacerbates or even creates a new digital divide for currency.