The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Australian Treasury concluded on September 3, 2026, that there is currently “no clear public interest case for a retail CBDC,” setting aside a central bank digital currency for households. In the same media release, 2026-24, the RBA opened a consultation, running until October 30, on the role of RITS, its wholesale settlement system, in a tokenized ecosystem. The two documents pull in opposite directions: no digital cash for consumers, but active work on central bank money for tokenized wholesale markets.
A retail central bank digital currency would be a tokenized form of central bank money that households could use for everyday payments. It would complement banknotes, not replace them. Australians today hold most of their money as bank deposits, which are claims on commercial banks. The update confirms the 2024 assessment, and the RBA says it will reassess the case if circumstances, and the policy case, change.
Focus groups found Australians broadly indifferent
The decision rests first on a direct consultation of the public, run by Verian, an independent research agency. It held 33 focus groups with 239 participants between February and July 2026, in every state and territory and in metropolitan, regional, and remote locations. Dedicated sessions reached groups rarely heard in public consultations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Participants struggled to tell a retail CBDC apart from the money they already use, or to see what it would do for them personally. Many saw managing yet another payment method as a burden. Among those with strong views, opposition won out: more than twice as many said it was “definitely not for me” as said they “would love it.”
Cash use has stopped falling
A related argument for a retail CBDC is that it would keep central bank money within the public’s reach as banknotes fade. The RBA’s Consumer Payments Survey shows the opposite. In 2025, 50% of Australians said they used cash at least once a week, up from 47% in 2022, and cash accounted for 15% of payments by number, up from 13% in 2022.
The second argument concerns monetary sovereignty. The 2024 assessment identified three scenarios for currency substitution: persistently high inflation, superior payment functionality offered by a foreign digital monetary system, and a commercial platform that requires a tokenized money in a foreign currency to take part. The RBA sees substitution mainly in emerging economies where confidence in the local currency is low. It considers the third scenario more plausible than the others in the years ahead, but says a retail CBDC might have limited effect as a countermeasure.
| Criterion | 2024 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Unmet payment needs | Public consultation still needed | The system meets Australians’ needs |
| Monetary sovereignty | Substitution risks too low to justify issuance | No sign of currency substitution in Australia |
| Cash use | At record lows after years of decline | Stabilized |
The RITS consultation targets tokenized wholesale settlement
RITS, the Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System, settles interbank obligations from high-value payments and market transactions in central bank money, across the accounts that institutions hold at the RBA, known as Exchange Settlement Accounts. The consultation is one of the 11 initiatives in the final report of Project Acacia, the tokenization experiment the RBA delivered in May 2026 with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre. The paper seeks comments on four topics:
- Synchronizing tokenized asset platforms with RITS and the Fast Settlement Service for delivery-versus-payment settlement.
- Exchange at par between tokenized private monies issued by different institutions.
- Stablecoin issuers’ access to central bank reserves.
- The design of tokenized reserves, from issuance to liquidity management.
The paper describes three ways to achieve delivery versus payment. An asset lock freezes the security on its platform while the cash leg settles in RITS. A reserves lock works the other way around and is already in use: the electronic property conveyancing platforms PEXA and Sympli use reservation batches to lock the paying banks’ funds before the transfer is lodged with the land registry. The third model locks both legs.
Stablecoin backing runs into a segregation problem
Stablecoins are the hard part. Authorized deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) can apply for a settlement account, but stablecoin issuers that are not ADIs generally cannot. During Project Acacia, Forte, a non-ADI issuer of the AUDF stablecoin, deposited funds with an ADI that held equivalent balances in its settlement account under a private contract. The RBA notes that such an arrangement “would not provide a clear legal or operational separation between the assets backing the stablecoin” and the ADI’s other holdings in that account. Account holders act as principal, not as agent or trustee, so the end customer has no direct claim on the central bank.
The update also places the RBA among its peers. The Bank of Canada, Norges Bank, and the South African Reserve Bank have recently deprioritized retail CBDC work in favor of wholesale CBDC or other payments issues. The euro area is the advanced economy furthest along, but its reasons are specific to its geography: payment systems fragmented across countries and reliance on foreign payment providers. The RBA notes that Australia faces neither problem. Its payment arrangements are harmonized across states and served by a competitive mix of domestic and foreign providers.