The Digital Dollar Project (DDP) announced the completion of a pilot study of remittance payments to the Philippines using a simulated retail central bank digital currency (rCBDC). Western Union (NYSE:WU) and BDO Unibank were partners in the project.
The project used a version of the DDP’s Champion Model. In it, a simulated central bank issued CBDCs to an intermediary bank, which provided access to it to Western Union (WU) for remittance to a BDO Unibank customer in the Philippines. WU used a decentralized exchange (DEX) to trade a dollar CBDC for a Philippine peso CBDC at a real-time rate set by a third-party oracle. WU received payment confirmation and transferred the amount to the bank customer’s account.