Brazil's central bank has picked project proposals from nine firms - including Santander, Visa and Bitcoin Market - for a challenge investigating the development of a CBDC.
Late last year, the central bank outlined plans to carry out a CBDC pilot in 2022, with a final version of a digital real ready by 2024.
To help with this, it invited applicants for the 'Lift Challenge Real Digital', investigating various aspects of the project.
The bank has now whittled down 47 proposals from eight countries to nine submissions from DeFi outfit Aave, Banco Santander Brasil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks, Giesecke + Devrient, Itaú Unibanco, Bitcoin Market, Tecban, Vert, and Visa do Brasil.
The proposals cover areas such as delivery versus payment, payment versus payment, IoT, DeFi applications, and payment solutions when both payer and receiver are without internet access.
The next stage of the challenge will see the projects implemented through to the end of July.